The Islander
by Vena Grey
Summary: It was just a body. She'd seen dozens of them before, most far worse than this. But since then, whenever she sleeps, she finds herself in a place meant for children to go in their dreams. An old-fashioned whodunit, Captain Swan style. AU, now complete.
1. The Body

**The Islander  
**_A Once Upon a Time fiction by Vena Grey_

**Summary:** It was just a body. She'd seen dozens of them before, most far worse than this. But since then, whenever she sleeps, she finds herself in a place meant for children to go in their dreams. An old-fashioned whodunit, Captain Swan style. AU.

**Disclaimer:** Sometimes, I like to play with other people's characters.

**Author's intro: **Once upon a time, a little novelist from the Pacific Northwest went to university and forgot how to write fiction. Nearly five years later, the desire to get back in touch with that part of herself materialized with a vengeance. Rather than dive off the cliff headlong, she decided to practice with fanfiction. At the time, her mind was full of three things: Once, to which she'd been introduced in a whirlwind over the span of a month, given that she now had time for television again; financial research, which was thoroughly boggling her mind; and her thesis in criminology. Amidst that sea, _The Islander_ came into the world.

This little story was born in a NaNoWriMo-esque writing frenzy during the summer of 2014. I barely remember writing it. It's freaking _bizarre._ But I love my little mutant of a story.

A couple of last things before I stop rambling and let you read. **PhiraLovesLoki** and **SaharaDesiderata** (now called The Poly Lama) very generously beta-ed the first half of this story for me, and I'm grateful for their help. Secondly, because it was brought up during the beta process: I am American but I use British spelling. I'm not sure why, but I've done so as long as I can remember.

Without further ado, then, _The Islander._ Bon voyage.

* * *

**Chapter One  
**_The body_

The problem with a room with a lot of windows in an old building in the city is that without fail, every witching hour when the bars closed, the sound of sirens would split the air in the dark room like she wasn't inside at all and she'd roll her face into the pillow and groan. She'd tried everything she could think of: extra weather stripping, earplugs, a box fan for the ambiance, and when _that_ didn't work, even one of those whirring machines Mary Margaret had bought for her son to help him sleep through the summer thunderstorms. Nothing.

Usually it was a matter of just rolling over again, pulling the covers over her head, and forcing her mind into nothingness long enough to fall asleep. There were nights, though, when she'd already had a hard go about it getting there in the first place—nights when she'd turn over, roll on her back and map the grooves in the ceiling, always catching a glimpse of red out of the corner of her eye with an ungodly number like _2:15_ or _4:27_ or _3:48 _blinking back at her. That morning, her whirring thoughts deposited her just shy of her normal rising time. It was still dark, but with a measly twelve minutes until 5:00, she exhaled, swung herself out of bed, and put her hair up for her morning run.

Henry's school was just a couple of subway stops away. She didn't know how he did it, but her son, reared in the chaos of her college co-op after she'd found herself pregnant at eighteen, had the miraculous ability to wake up the first time his alarm went off barely forty minutes before he had to be there, shower, dress, eat, _read_, and dart out to catch his train as soon as it pulled into the station and was _never late._ _Superhuman,_ she sometimes thought. But it was nice, all the same. Forty minutes before school was 6:50, leaving Emma enough time after her own early rise to catch a 15-minute train both ways to Central Park and run a good seven or eight miles in the morning calm before he was even up. It was the one time, after the bars closed but before the morning rush, that the city felt small, and sometimes as her feet beat a path through the trails she would imagine she was in another place, running through the forest, or, if she was feeling motivated, on the run from some dangerous foe.

But it was the cop in her that never let her leave home without her gun, and when she saw the crowd of onlookers gathering around an immobile shape on the path ahead she reached for her holster before she noticed two other men in uniform had beat her to it. Still, out of instinct, "NYPD," she said a little breathlessly, holding the badge in front of her. She met the eyes of one of the officers.

"Get back," the other said, waving away the crowd.

The man was lying face down on his left arm, his right forward as though he'd meant to catch himself. A small pool of blood crept out from his chest, opposite where, facing her, a remarkable hole tore through the leather of his jacket, and it was then that she decided to look to one of the officers.

"How long has he been here?" She didn't recognise either of them.

"The body's still warm; less than half an hour, I'd imagine." He held her gaze. "The medical team is on their way."

"Any signs of foul play?"

"Aside from the hole through his back?" He smiled a little despite the situation. "The dirt on the trail tells us he was running through the woods when they caught up with him, but he doesn't have much on him now."

"Think whoever was after him took something?"

"We don't know yet, but we will soon enough. We'll keep you posted if it's serious. Sidney Glass," he extended a hand over the body and she eyed it a moment before doing the same.

"Emma Swan."

"Well, Emma, sorry to have kicked off your morning this way, but I think we can take it from here. Good to meet you, despite the circumstances."

She looked up from the body and saw he was looking at her. "Sure, you too." And then she rose to her feet and was off again, catching the 6:30 train as it was leaving instead of arriving, but still back in time to have Henry's breakfast cooking before he was awake, like any other morning.

* * *

The flurry of action when she arrived at the station that morning was surprisingly average compared to what she'd expected. Thankfully, it was Ruby's turn to get the coffee that day, and the junior detective didn't even look up from the stack of papers she was sorting through to hand Emma her drink. "Thanks," she muttered as she passed. Her partner was already standing by her desk, boring holes into the side of her head with his sharp gaze.

"Were you going to tell me you found a body in Central Park while you were running this morning?"

"Hello to you, too, Graham," she quipped, setting her briefcase on her chair, straightening her jacket and steeling herself before meeting his eyes. "I didn't find it. If you already knew about this, you would know there were two other officers already there when I found him."

"Yes, Regina called after hearing from Officer Glass that you'd found them. I just wanted to make sure you were alright—you weren't on duty." She felt his hand on her arm before registering its presence, and when she did she shrugged it off.

"I'm fine," she said slowly. "I had my gun, and I left when they said they didn't need help. No questions asked, no rules broken."

He exhaled slowly and nodded. "I know. I trust you." He looked like he wanted to add something but stopped himself. "Look, Emma, I know it's been a while since the last one, and if you want to talk about it—"

"I'm fine," she repeated, this time with a small smile. "I'm going to go talk to Regina before I get settled in. Graham, you don't need to worry about me." She took her coffee and was brushing past before he could say anything else.

She knocked twice at the Captain's door. It was Emma that spoke first once she entered.

"Graham told me you'd gotten a call from Sidney Glass that I'd found a body in Central Park this morning."

"Glass told me you'd run into them, yes." Regina looked up from the stack of papers she had in front of her. "Might I ask what you were doing in Central Park that early in the day?"

"I run there every morning before Henry wakes up. I left when they said they had it covered."

"I know, Swan. You weren't out of order. I just wanted to know if you saw anything."

"No, he was already dead by the time I got there. It looked like he'd been chased."

"And you didn't hear anything?"

"Nothing unusual. Glass said he thought the guy had been dead half an hour by then."

"Which would have put you on the other side of the park, so you wouldn't have heard anything. Especially not a stabbing." She ran a hand over her face.

"They used a knife?"

"That's typically what a stabbing entails." She dropped her hand to the table and sighed, shaking her head, silently apologizing. "I'll let Glass know. Thank you," she finished, and Emma turned.

The rest of the day was a blur. That morning hung over her and Graham like a wet blanket. As they wrapped up their previous case, he would stand too close, touch her too much, always behind her as though he were protecting her from something, acting as though what she'd seen that morning were some sort of disturbing anomaly as opposed to a standard part of her job. Lunch with Ruby was a reprieve. But then she had a briefing, then a patrol shift. Graham almost looked like he wanted to say something as she was leaving, but didn't, and his concern nagged at the back of her mind the whole way home.

When she arrived home that evening, Henry was still at soccer practice. An hour-old text informed her that he would be having dinner at Avery's that night and would be staying overnight to work on a project they'd been assigned together, so she didn't need to wait up for him. She ran a hand over her face and sighed. It was good timing, actually, and the Martins were good people, so he'd be fine—no, that wasn't it, she reasoned. The day felt twice as long, and before she knew what she was doing the whiskey was falling into the glass and she was floating to Henry's Xbox, depositing _Good Will Hunting_ into the open tray, herself back on the couch, and concentrating her entire being on zoning out to the fullest extent of her abilities.

It didn't make sense that this was bothering her. She'd encountered the same situation she'd found this morning a dozen times—all things considered, this one was relatively tame in her line of work. That wasn't it. Graham had been unusually…_I don't know, protective,_ she reasoned, but he'd been doing that for a while, and she'd never wanted to think about why. Ruby? Ruby had been disturbed by the report when they'd talked about it, but she still wasn't used to the idea of people being killed like this. And Regina had almost expected her to report the news, but though she too had seemed troubled, her ability to approach it with such serenity was enviable, minor lapses aside.

Emma ran a hand through her hair and pulled herself back to the movie. _I'll bet it's just me, _she decided. _It's probably nothing._ When she sipped her drink, the burn in her throat was calming. She set it on the floor. And before she could think again, the room around her went dark.

* * *

She'd never seen this place before. The sand below her feet was course and rough, like on the shoreline that passed for a beach not far from her third foster home in Maine. That one was her sixth overall, and by the time she reached it she was entering seventh grade. She took up running, then, in whatever kind of weather Maine could throw at her; the crunch of the sand beneath her shoes drowned out not only the snide remarks echoing in her head after another first day at school but also the nag of her own subconscious that she was just some unwanted kid no one cared about.

But the water before her wasn't the blue-grey tumult of the North Atlantic. It was overcast, but this water, she knew, was the purest blue-green she could imagine. And behind her, instead of the sparse outer piers of Portland, were trees and flowers of the most vibrant colours, a thick forest that wasn't necessarily inviting but from which this obscure sense of _adventure_ seemed to radiate like a wind.

_What is this place?_ She thought. There didn't appear to be anyone here, no signs of civilisation, and yet, she didn't quite feel like she was alone.

When she looked down, however, she was puzzled. On her arms were the sleeves of a red leather jacket she'd thought she'd lost years ago. She checked the tag in the inner seam—the _ES _she'd written to mark it was as there as it always had been. Past the necklace, a golden circular thing she didn't pay much attention to, she saw on her feet the short Timberland boots she'd _vividly_ remembered setting fire to in a Viking funeral at the end of her post-graduate European backpacking trip with Mary Margaret. _That's not possible,_ she thought. _This has to be a dream._

"And so it is," an accented voice attached to a man she had _not_ heard approach sounded from behind her. She tried not to jump. He smirked a bit at the effort; she narrowed her eyes, at which he gestured grandly to the land behind them and she felt at her hip pocket for her gun. No dice. "This, so they say, is a land where you can have anything you want. Evidently it works, but yes," he turned back to her then and she started a little, "as it is a dream, that would be the catch." He raised an eyebrow. "Now who might you be?"

"That's none of your business." She stepped back as though meaning to leave, her expression guarded. He picked up on it.

"You know, you _can_ leave at any point. All you have to do is wake up." That smirk again. It was then that she noticed his clothing: black, everything, long leather jacket, a complicated vest resembling alligator skin, both that and the linen shirt half open and displaying both a substantial amount of chest and a strange silver necklace she, for some reason, found herself wanting to touch. She shook her head once and his smirk grew such that it reached his eyes. "Or, you could stay here, and keep me company as long as your curiosity suits you."

And at _that,_ she snapped to attention and deliberately did _not_ dwell on the fact he'd made her curiosity sound like something dirty. Instead, she turned and quickly made a beeline for the forest behind them.

"Or I could get the hell away from _you_ and figure out what I'm doing here in the first place," she huffed. She heard him chuckle to himself as she marched off and suppressed a groan of protest. His eyes were so trained on her she almost felt heat on her back.

He gave her thirty seconds' head start.

* * *

The maze of trees and tropical plants she found herself in didn't seem to lead much of anywhere. She proceeded in what she _thought_ was a straight line, finding the forest floor's lack of elevation change rather irritable. Stranger still was the fact the only sounds she heard were the ones she was making. The foliage rustled as she pushed it aside, but the treads of her boots were quiet on the forest floor. There were no animals, at least not that she could see. This both reassured and troubled her; she hadn't yet seen any fruit aside from small berries growing on the island either.

A more pressing concern, she figured, was water. But as she thought about it, it occurred to her she wasn't thirsty. Not only _that_, she wasn't tired. It had to have been at least an hour and a half of walking by then, but at this rate, it appeared she could have gone on for days just as she was.

As she questioned the peculiarity of this place and her seeming lack of physiological needs, a fallen tree presented itself to the side of her beaten path as though by magic. She didn't question it, opting instead to sit and study the unchanging, strangely silent forest as she might an alien planet. A second rustling only moments later pulled her attention back to the route she'd taken. She wasn't surprised to see the man she'd met on the beach emerge through the leaves—to her slight alarm, however, the impulse that ordinarily would have made her get up and run again didn't present itself. Still, she narrowed her eyes.

"You've seriously been following me this whole time?" she asked flatly. This time, though, he smiled.

"Aye. At first I thought I'd imagined you, so I wanted to be sure."

"Sure of what? I'm definitely here, not that I know where here _is_, exactly, but I don't think I should be." She laughed a bit. "I _really _need to be getting back."

"In that case, in what order should I proceed?"

"What?"

"Well, should I first tell you where you are, how to leave, or why you're here? Take your pick."

She looked at him intently, replying immediately, "Where."

"Well, you're in Neverland," he shot back, stepping a few paces closer. "That was the easy one, and explains how you're here and how to leave. You're asleep, so to leave, you just wake up."

"You make it sound so simple."

"Well, as simple as waking up." The smirk was back, and as he was now standing uncomfortably close she rose to her feet. "Don't you want to know the last answer?"

His blue stare was so intense it made her shiver. "I thought you'd covered your bases."

"No, I've neglected one thing," he raised his hand and pushed her hair from her face, grin growing just so as he heard her breath catch. "Why you're here."

And then, her right foot came down on his left and she pushed against his chest and took off through the forest with the agility of a cat. He swore and ran after her.

* * *

The advantage to seeming _no_ physical limitations in this place was that her pace five minutes in was no slower than when she started running away from that creep. The disadvantage, of course, was that _he_ knew the terrain; when she caught a glimpse of him blocking her path, she changed course without breaking stride, grinning just a second when she heard him swear and attempt to match her turns.

And then, it was so obvious. She turned again, this time further away, then again toward the way she'd come, then straight forward to where she was going, continuing in that nature until she couldn't hear him anymore and she felt the exhilaration flood over her like a wave. She pushed herself faster, now not to elude him but because the rush of the wind in her hair and on her skin felt like flying. She'd never run like this before. So, just to try it, she levered herself with grace off the trunk of a tree, landing ten feet away and keeping on, and before she knew it was bounding through the trees in a way that was _not humanly possible._ _He's right,_ she thought between breaths. _This _is_ a dream. _

When the trees gave way into a small clearing, she stopped, not to catch her breath but to just _look_. _I can wake up whenever I want,_ she decided. She could run vertically up a tree, stand astride the branches and stare at the sky, if she felt like it. When she turned back the way she'd come, though, she felt her heart sink: there he was again, standing this time with his arms crossed sternly, a glint of something silver in his left hand.

And that's when she saw it. Her eyes went wide. The silver glint was an enormous metal hook, and he wasn't holding it—it _was_ his left hand.

"How the hell do you keep finding me?" Her voice came out smaller than she liked, and she couldn't look away from his _hook._

"I'd been _trying_ to tell you that—"

But before he could finish, she was gone.

* * *

_I don't know if I mentioned earlier, but the first draft of this story is already finished. I'll be updating every Monday as best I'm able. We've got twelve chapters and an epilogue, and this is (probably) the only chapter that will have a long author's note. Crossing my fingers._

_Fanfiction has made reviewing so much more convenient, now that the little box is at the bottom of the page. Do me a solid and leave a review on your way out, would you? _

_See you next week!_

_Vena_


	2. The Case

**AN: **It begins. Many thanks to **PhiraLovesLoki** and **SaharaDesiderata **for betaing.

* * *

**Chapter Two  
**_The case_

Emma awoke in the middle of the night to a blue TV screen and a sore back. It took a few seconds for her to remember where she was; she'd fallen asleep on the couch during the movie, she figured, thankful that Henry was staying at Avery's so she wouldn't have to explain why. She sat up abruptly, her foot tapping the whiskey she'd set on the floor and nearly knocking it over. She set it on the coffee table. _What time is it? How long was I gone?_

_3:15,_ her watch blinked at her. She leaned back and willed the ceiling to explain to her why she couldn't sleep through the night.

And she wouldn't, not now. As she thought about it, Emma realised with surprise that she not only wasn't tired, she felt downright _awake,_ as though it were the middle of the morning rather than the middle of the night. The blue of the TV screen was making everything look frozen, so she turned it off, opting instead for the light, and, without even considering whether she would try and sleep again, got up to fix herself the most luxurious breakfast she could think of.

It wasn't a realistic option, sleeping now. She'd been an insomniac for years; Mary Margaret had envied her in college, between her almost supernatural ability to already be awake whenever her toddler needed her to the more mythical ability to work long hours into the night without having to feel it the next day. It wasn't like that, she'd explained once. The legend persisted. Now, she thought perhaps her friend wasn't so far off, though of course this decision would probably reckon itself to her in twelve hours with an extra shot or two of espresso.

The memory of the dream she'd had came crashing back to her as she was cracking eggs. She swore as one of them slid down the wrong side of the skillet toward the gas burner and almost threw the thing off the metal prongs as she switched it off, swearing again when the hot metal burned her hand as she made to remove it before clearing her mess. _Get it together,_ she told herself. She felt shaky—literally. As she looked again at her hands, they were quivering just so, as though remembering how it felt to lever off the trees like a monkey and run Olympic sprinter-style through an island that was supposed to be the subject of children's fairy tales.

Her eyes widened. _Fairy tales. _A man with a hook for a hand. _Captain Hook?_ She laughed beside herself at the thought. _I thought he had a perm and a wax moustache. _

And with that, she waved it off. Stranger things had happened to her in dreams than meeting fictional pirates. While it was easy enough to put away, though, she found it more like a memory in its hold on her conscious, and she was nearly finished preparing her breakfast by the time it slipped away.

As she started in on the meal, she read through the briefing papers she'd received the previous day. It was connected to the case she and Graham had been working on before she'd found the man in the park yesterday—she paused a little at the thought, made sure she could swallow, and proceeded. Some kind of insider trading scheme. It wasn't up her usual alley, but its fallout effects were, as the evidence was coming in faster and faster that some of the murders and other violence they'd been dealing with over the last several years were connected to deals associated with this firm, almost like the mafia.

And yesterday afternoon, the connection became no longer just a lucky guess. The man in the park had been a John Doe when she'd found him, carrying no identification, and his blood didn't return a match in the federal system—that is, until Graham had thrown out the possibility that he wasn't American, at which point Regina, as Captain, had placed a few calls through the Assistant Chief, who directed them through the FBI until _Interpol_ _(holy shit,_ she'd thought_)_ returned a match from Edinburgh of an Irish citizen living in Scotland. When, with that, the case from that morning was shifted quite clearly beyond the jurisdiction of Officer Glass' precinct, a sense of dread Emma hadn't been able to source locked onto her stomach just long enough for her to learn that no, this particular one was beyond her jurisdiction as well, but not entirely. The murder weapon—a hunting knife with initials BB found that afternoon about a quarter mile away, buried dirty and matching the man's blood—had come from a pawn shop in Brooklyn.

And then it became confusing as to what her role was, it being still too early in the day to think about this, so she pushed the papers aside and tried to focus her attention on the food she'd prepared for herself.

Some 45 minutes later, Emma was lacing up her running shoes when her phone lit beside her. Graham.

—_Mind if I join you?_

_Very much,_ she thought before sighing to herself. She closed her eyes and took a couple breaths. _He's not trying to be overbearing; maybe he's just concerned. _She did up the other shoe. _And maybe it's nothing and he really does just want to run at five in the morning._ It wasn't entirely convincing, but it was enough for her to swallow her second thoughts and reply with:

—_Okay. Meet me at 57__th__ in 15_

Phone, gun, and badge in their holster, Emma was still pulling her shirt on as she slid out the door. It was some effort to keep her mind purposefully blank the whole trip. When she saw her partner waiting by a lamppost, looking almost like he was in pain but putting on a smile when he saw her, she returned it the best she could as she jogged up to him.

"I usually do the whole periphery, think you can handle it?"

"Only if you can," he replied good-naturedly, and they were off.

With Graham's longer stride putting her pace a little faster than usual, their rate was such that conversation was initially laboured, then silent. Emma knew he noticed when she deliberately looked left, away from the place the man had fallen from the woods yesterday, when they passed that spot. As they neared where they'd began, she slowed, making her way toward the pond, and as though reading her mind, Graham anticipated her, raising a hand to her shoulder and squeezing a bit. To her surprise, she didn't shrug it off. More so, he didn't press.

And that was one of her favourite things about Graham. Despite the big-brotherly attitude, he knew when she needed space, and he didn't coddle her or treat her like something breakable. They looked out for each other—and, she supposed, in not telling him about what had happened yesterday, she'd unwittingly slipped on their unspoken agreement.

"How long do we have?" He asked as they neared the waterfront.

"About half an hour. I still need to change."

"You're telling me," he laughed a bit, glancing down at himself. "Come on, I'll buy you coffee."

"It's my turn to get it today. Ruby will be pissed."

"Well, then, I'll buy _both_ of you coffee. Come on," he steered them toward the park entrance, leaving no room for argument. Emma rolled her eyes.

"Fine."

They talked good-naturedly at that point, taking their time in leaving the park that was empty but for others like them. Graham picked up on her odd profusion of time, at which she informed him that no, she wasn't usually this available, but Henry stayed the night with a friend to work on a project, and even crazier, she'd woken up at 3:15 after the weirdest dream and been too awake to go back to sleep. He asked about the dream. She remembered all of it. But she also remembered cleaning eggs off the stovetop, and told him all she could remember was running through the forest faster than should be possible, running into a man with a hook for a hand before she woke up.

"What, like Captain Hook?" He laughed a bit.

"Or something. I have no idea." And then, after figuring she wouldn't sleep again, she'd made a sinfully large breakfast and tried to go over the briefing but decided it could wait. "You've probably been over the whole thing, Mr. Responsible."

"Guilty as charged." He held up his hands. "Want me to tell you or should I let you find out?"

"Spare me the misery?"

Graham smiled, nodding once. "Of course. We're looking into the prints on the knife—once we know who it is, why they wanted to kill Liam Jones, perhaps why he was in America in the first place, we look for the network. It seems straightforward enough." The shop was nearly empty at that hour, but he was careful not to say too much in the open. Emma nodded.

"There's still something bothering you about this."

She paused, thinking. "Yeah. I can't shake how weird it is that the guy I randomly found yesterday would wind up with his case as close to our jurisdiction as it can be. It's just too…I don't know, too much of a coincidence." She pressed her temples. "It's almost like it was on purpose."

And at that, and a flash of the pained expression he hoped she didn't see, Graham offered his hand. She took it momentarily as she realised they both had to get back. "That would be a bit too perfect," he disagreed. The expression was gone as quickly as it came. As they parted at 57th, he winked that she could reimburse him that afternoon, and disappeared into the underground before seeing her flip him off in response.

Yet, something was bothering her. She'd seen the expression just then, the same one he'd worn when they met that morning, _and_ she'd seen him try to hide it. _Now that I think about it, we only talked about me. That's weird. It's almost like he's hiding something. _As the train pulled up and she boarded, however, the thought escaped her, retreating into her subconscious as the doors pulled closed.

* * *

Ruby's lukewarm vanilla latte in tow, Emma arrived home to a pile of clean dishes and a note for her on the fridge whiteboard. She heard the shower running before she noticed Avery absorbed in his phone in the living room. "Hi, Ms. Swan," he said without looking up.

"Hey, Avery. What're you two doing here so early?"

"Henry forgot something for the project, and we had time so he did that." He nodded at the dishes. "Well, I may have helped. But I think you have the perfect son. Hey, is that for me?" He nodded at the second coffee in her hand. As he finished, the door to the bathroom opened, followed by "Hi, mom," and the sound of her son's door closing. She laughed to herself.

"Sometimes I wonder. I made a huge breakfast this morning, you guys are welcome to whatever's left."

"Oh, we took care of that, too," Avery smirked and gathered his things, resuming whatever he was doing with his phone on foot. A few moments later, Henry's door opened.

"Hey, you're back kinda late. What took you?"

Emma laughed again, louder this time. "Sometimes I think _you're_ the parent—cleaning my mess, asking where I've been. Are you real?" She smiled. "Thanks for doing the dishes, by the way. And nothing exciting; Graham ran with me this morning and we did our coffee run early."

"I like Graham. He looks out for you," he replied without looking at her, shrugging on his backpack. "Wish us luck on the project, I guess? And good luck with your new case."

"How did you—" They were out the door before she could finish. But when she looked at the counter, she wanted to smack her head on it. There, in plain view of two very curious seventh-graders, was her briefing on what was now her segment of an international cartel case. Luckily, it had been in its folder; unluckily, it had been labelled.

She felt her phone vibrate in its holster.

—_I didn't look. Not that I don't trust him, but I cleaned up to reduce the amount of time Avery would be alone with it. Don't think he noticed. And I would have done it anyway. Love you_

_Smart kid_, she thought as she turned the water on and undressed.

* * *

"Em_ma,_ my coffee's cold," Ruby faux-pouted. Emma rolled her eyes, grinning at her junior's antics.

"There's a microwave in the break room. It's caffeine, don't complain."

Her back now to her younger colleague as she turned toward her desk, she missed the mischievous grin that spread its way over Ruby's face as she followed her there.

"Now, why would my coffee be cold? Let's think. Emma normally gets it right before coming to work, which would mean that if it's cold, she must have gotten it earlier. She wouldn't get it in the middle of getting ready, which would mean she had to get it after running, which would mean," she turned, smirking hugely as she ticked off Emma's story item for item, "that something kept her from going right home this morning, 'cause nothing breaks Emma Swan from her routine with Henry. What were you up to this morning, _detective?"_ She crossed her arms triumphantly and stared Emma down her nose.

"Nothing," she replied, just barely too quickly. Ruby perked.

"Did I get it?! Oh, _come on!_ You know that was good."

"You forgot that Henry had to be gone this morning, or I'd have gone straight home."

"_You_ are avoiding the question, detective." She spun around so she was blocking Emma's way.

"Ruby, come _on,_" she rolled her eyes again, ducking past her younger colleague. "I went running with Graham. _Really_ not exciting. And yes, we got the coffee afterward. You can thank _him_—he treated you."

Ruby smirked. "Well well, Emma Swan, nicely played. Hot running date, _and_ Henry did your dishes for you this morning? I wanna be you." She winked and turned back to her desk, trying and failing not to laugh at Emma's dumbfounded expression before whispering, "hide your phone screen next time." She looked down—yes, she _had_ been texting Mary Margaret about that as she'd walked in.

Emma deflated a bit, smiling despite herself. She clapped her friend on the shoulder. "You're good."

"I know."

As she turned back to her desk, though, that little twinge of concern that had wormed its way into her gut when she'd first seen Graham's expression that morning gnawed at her again. It had been building up, something that was getting harder to ignore between them—even though, as she had when she'd accepted his running offer, she'd made a valiant effort not to notice it. She'd just hoped it would go away—they were _partners. _It was not only unfeasible, it was impossible. She had to kill that idea before it grew.

Still, she found herself glancing at his desk, just to be sure. Mercifully, it was empty. He wasn't in yet. She set her papers and briefcase down, shrugging out of her jacket as she saw him walk in. As he passed her, he paused.

"Meet me in the briefing room once you've had a chance to look over the files?"

"Sure, I'll be there in 15."

* * *

He was already there when she entered. She closed the door behind her.

"What did you find that you wanted to meet in here for?"

"I needed that." He gestured at the whiteboard that took up the entire back wall. "There's a grid in the files that I wanted to show you, plus I did some digging that wasn't in there." He handed her a handwritten sheet of legal paper, which she slipped into the file. "That's for later. For now, I need to show you something."

While his back was to her, she opened the file as she followed him to the board. It was definitely _not_ a chart—in fact, it looked like a letter. She shut it again and boxed away her curiosity; Graham launched right into his discovery.

"Liam Jones' visa is an H-1B. It's the skilled non-resident visa—for people with technical skills who want to work in this country but don't want to immigrate. It's what my father had been on when he moved us here when my mum was pregnant before we went back to Belfast, and why I'm a double citizen. But that's irrelevant, and this where it gets interesting." He drew a circle around Liam Jones' name, then a line to another circle he filled with the name William Smee. "This man owns the pawn shop the knife that killed Liam came out of. That's in the file. And this," he drew another circle above the other two, writing in it _Ariel Fisher_, "according to Victor Whale in forensics, is a match for the fingerprints on the knife. The only problem is," he drew a dash through the circle he'd just drawn. "Ariel Fisher is dead. Died in a car crash with her boyfriend a week ago in Long Island. The knife was in the tacklebox in her car. And the BB on the handle?" He looked at her. "Bill Blackbeard, her mother's grandfather."

"Did Ariel steal the knife? I mean, if it was a family heirloom…"

"No, I don't think so. I thought about it after I got home this morning. I don't have hard evidence for this, but I think Smee may have looted it from the crash site when the tacklebox fell open. It'd be worth a good sum to a collector. And that's what this pawnshop is. It's his collection. I looked into it before we met just now. This isn't a typical pawnshop, these are antiques the likes of which I've never seen."

"Do we know who stole it from there, then?"

"That's another hole, but we do have a bit of a lead. If Smee is dealing in rare antiques, he has to be dealing with a certain level of…clientele." Graham drew another circle, and wrote the ambiguous _Cartel_ inside. "That, or the more likely scenario: it's a cover. The knife wouldn't look out of place, there; perhaps the items are code names for some accounting tricks. Either way, if we were able to tap into the transaction history for this shop, I imagine there might be a pattern connecting us here." He tapped below the _Cartel_ circle. "Even better—I'd say I knew just the man to call, the problem of course being that his name is Liam Jones."

"What?"

Graham's face was alight. "Jones was a data engineer. If anyone would have been able to trace something like that, it would've been him. If we can establish this? Emma." He stepped away from the board, taking both her shoulders and staring at her more alive than she'd seen him in months. "Not only would we have a motive, we'd have our network. It was no amateur that killed Liam—they left no prints behind. But if we could find this killer," he stepped back to the board, underlining the _Cartel_ circle several times, "we might just have _this_. I know it seems like a long shot, but I just have a feeling_. _And if Smee stole the knife? Who's to say he didn't orchestrate the entire crash?"

"Graham…"

"Emma, _please._" He set the marker down. "We don't have anything else to go on right now—they left _no_ evidence. Let's just try and see how far we can take it." When he stepped back to her, he took her hands this time instead of her shoulders. "I'll even say for you to keep investigating other possibilities. But this could _be something._"

She sighed, pulling her hands back, and looked intently at the file on the table beside her. "Okay," she said, finally. "But if you're going to do this, I'm going to help. See what else you can find out about this shop." She looked at him, inhaling slowly before adding, "I need to make a call."

* * *

He wasn't in, but she didn't expect him to be. He was a stock trader on the floor with the rest of them at the opening bell—_probably doesn't even have his personal phone on him,_ she thought once she'd hung up.

"_Hi, Neal,"_ she'd begun. _"It's Emma. I know it's been a while, and we can talk about that later, but I need your help. My partner thinks that a financial firm called the Voyager Group might be connected to a case we're working on, and there may be others like them turning up. I'll explain later. Call me back when you can."_

* * *

_Things are about to get real, yo._

_Review or die. :) See you next week (if you survived)._

**_Terms:_**

_Data engineer: a fusion of normal engineer and really badass computer programmer. They work with data systems (i.e. systems that turn numbers into useful information), and a data engineer is someone responsible for setting up data systems that people who use the data rely on. They're often tasked with finding data that's relevant for analysis in a given situation.  
_

_Financial firm: a company that deals with investments, lending, insurance, and securities (things that prove you either own something or are in debt - stocks and bonds are some examples)._


	3. The Wager

**AN: **I'm going to go ahead and warn you now about the first third of this chapter. Stick with it, it's important. I promise. Also, I'd like to give a major shout-out to **mryddinwilt** helping me crack Tumblr. A link to my nascent offsite fiction hub will be up in my profile later today.

* * *

**Chapter Three  
**_The wager_

Neal Cassidy woke up the morning of Tuesday the 17th with a feeling that something was different about the day. It only lasted a minute. He sat up slowly, the freshly-laundered sheets pooling around him as he did so—it was a bright morning, the linen curtains on the east-facing windows no match for the sun that was coming later and later each day.

NPR's Morning Edition was playing softly from his alarm. He listened until the end of the segment before turning it off, careful not to disturb the sleeping form beside him. Tamara had been working with the new guy—that zealot, Greg Mendell—on the Asian markets and had spent far more than her share of extra hours in the office lately. _But_ _they make a good team_, he thought with a twinge of jealousy.

He pushed it aside, taking stock of the morning he had ahead of him. Nothing unusual so far: _an 8:00 with Forecasting, _he observed in his calendar. That was no big deal, though the prospect of facing the equally and bizarrely energetic team of Walsh and Scarlet that early would later prompt him to order a Black Eye to his usual Americano before heading in. After that, a couple of acquisitions to sign off on before a portfolio meeting with his immediate superior, Blue, at 11. _Great,_ he thought. That left a couple of hours free for him to spend at the exchange. It was a good day, he decided, as he programmed the coffee machine to start brewing when Tamara would wake up and left her half a bagel, an orange, and a short note.

As he exited the cab he'd hailed on his way out of his first meeting, he felt his phone begin to vibrate. He dug it out of his pocket as someone held the door open for him, glancing at the screen for half a second before looking up _just_ in time to avoid spilling his second hot coffee of the morning all over Albert Spencer.

"Excuse me, sorry," he acknowledged the older man with a nod.

"Good catch. No harm done." He looked up, pausing as Neal hit _ignore_ on his phone without looking at the screen. "Neal, it's good to run into you. There's actually something I'd wanted to discuss with you."

"Yeah, what is it?"

"As it happens, one of the key investors in Umbrasom at Georgios has backed out at the last minute."

"Really?" He took a step back toward Spencer. "That's the buzzy one people were saying might be the next Rozerem, right? Why?"

"Just last-minute cold feet, I would imagine. They were supposed to start trials two weeks ago, but now everyone is holding their breath as to whether they'll even be able to go _that _far. I thought, 'who do I know that might be willing to come in as an angel investor?' And of course, Ms. Blue was the first person that came to mind—in fact, if you have some time this afternoon, I'd be happy to sit down with you and tell you more."

Neal thought about it for a moment. He looked down at his phone, meaning to check his calendar, when he noticed whom it was he'd hung up on earlier. _Shit. Emma._

"You know what, do you have some time right now? I'm actually heading to a portfolio meeting with her in a couple of hours, I can bring it up with her then."

Spencer smiled. "That's the spirit. I've left all my files on it at the office—I'll tell you about it on the way over."

* * *

Neal paused, narrowing his eyes just so as he considered the implications of Spencer's offer. This was a tremendously risky move on his part, and frankly he didn't understand why the man was making this offer at all. Umbrasom was supposed to be a sleep drug, so taking it to trial would be dangerous and expensive—he couldn't help the worry that flashed through his mind as he looked over how much, exactly, the recalcitrant investor was pulling out of the project. $350 million was a significant chunk of change. All the same, if this drug ended up being successful—the prospects Spencer was showing him made the claim this drug would have a fraction of the side effects others of its type had had, which he'd believe when he saw it—it could be huge for his firm.

Which made it seem like a great idea—at least, for him.

_So why is _Spencer_ passing it up?_

The older man was still talking, so he drew his attention out of his thoughts and back to the information in front of him. As he cleaned off the last of his now-lukewarm coffee, he was glad, for once, to be on his way to a portfolio meeting. Within a few minutes, he'd collected the information he'd need to pass on to the senior management and was on his way out the door, tossing his cup in the trash and swearing again as he realised Emma had left him a voicemail.

To his surprise, once he'd arrived to his next meeting and begun to explain the prospect, Blue and the others were enthusiastic. _So this _is_ a good idea, then?_ Blue in particular was revered for her good judgment. They'd still need to double check some things, of course. Still—for once, a deal that _seemed_ too good to be true just…wasn't. _That's what the feeling I had this morning was about,_ he decided. It occurred to him in passing that he should probably run this by his father first. Though definitely not what Neal would call a good man, he was a thorough investigator. After another moment of thought, though, he decided against it—so was his superior.

A few hours later, the arrangement had been prepared, and he returned to the floor to find Spencer. The deal he'd put together was substantial—nothing earth-shattering, but befitting of both the scope of the project and the ambition behind its release. Their firm, Reul Ghorm, would take up the $350 million investment the shadow investor had withdrawn and help the drug move forward to trial. It was the largest deal he'd ever made. And while it was riskier than he'd expected, the risk was far from enough to dissuade him.

"Glad to see we're on the same page," Spencer smiled as he leafed through the papers.

Despite his smile, though, Neal felt an icy twinge in his chest. He didn't indulge it. Instead he shrugged, chalked it up to his excitement, offered his hand, and left the floor.

* * *

It was hours ago that she'd placed her call, still apparently without a word. He'd watched as she'd worked through lunch, calling whoever she could think of that might be able to dig up something on the shop's transaction history—nothing. What little they did have to report came up clean.

At some point Graham came up to Emma's desk. Upon seeing her frustration, he offered to trade segments: she could take over finding who stole the knife from the shop, perhaps who brought it there in the first place, and he could resume tracing the money trail as far as their jurisdiction would take them.

"Thank you," she said with relief.

He couldn't help but notice that she'd barely touched the file. It was open to the segments on Smee's shop, but he didn't press. She was concentrating—it was better to wait. The letter was still resting just inside the front cover. She seemed almost to have forgotten about it.

"You should eat something," he advised as she flipped through web pages, not leaving his spot against the wall of her cubicle.

"I will; there's just something I want to find first."

"I'll bring you something," he offered as he left, but she barely registered, just a faint nod as she began typing something with urgency.

They'd been partners eight months, ever since he'd started in her department. And while she'd always impressed him, it hadn't gotten to the point of being a problem until recently. He didn't know exactly when the desire to touch her had become impossible to ignore, or when his concern for her safety had evolved into protectiveness, but as much as he'd tried to shut it out, knowing even more than she did just how _not allowed_ it was, this _thing,_ this…whatever it was between them, had kept him up at night more than once—as it had last night, which he'd disguised under coffee this morning—and had him pouring himself into this case with gusto in an effort to distract himself.

He hadn't asked what she'd wanted, but it was easy enough to piece together based on what she brought to work on occasion. It was also, by then, 1:30, and since they'd both start to feel tired within the hour, picked up a second round of coffee before returning. When he arrived back, she was reaching for his letter, so he left her sandwich and coffee with her and smiled as her eyes softened and she thanked him for reading her mind.

But when she thought about it, she stopped what she was doing. When he'd left, she'd tracked down a few possible matches for the type of blade, but there was only one way to confirm them. She had to pay a visit to Victor Whale in forensics before she could do much else. Before she went downstairs, she tore off part of the sandwich to have on the way, chugged a bit of the coffee, and headed out. The letter could wait.

* * *

Whale's office, like all the others in forensics, was a couple of stories down, lit by old fluorescents and very much looking the part of a television set. When he wasn't in his office, she tapped on the door of the lab. He was wearing a mask, examining the body, and his gloves were a bit bloody, she could tell even from that distance. She looked down until he opened the door a few moments later, mask pulled down and gloves gone.

"Detective Swan," he acknowledged, carefully positioning himself so her view of the body was obstructed. "I'm in the middle of the autopsy; is there something I can help you with?"

"Yes," she said a little uneasily. "It won't take long. I wanted to check something with the knife; is there any way I can have a look at it?"

"You can have it, actually," he replied. "I finished my tests on it this morning. Just make sure I get it back. Which reminds me, actually—I found something peculiar in the blood, both in the traces on the knife and in the body. They're in the report on my desk. I was going to leave it with Regina on my way out this morning, but you can take it now if you want."

"Can you tell me about it?"

"Sure, real quick," he answered. "There was some kind of poison in his blood. I haven't been able to identify it yet, but it was concentrated in his left arm. Some kind of long, dark scar."

Her eyebrows furrowed. "What could _that_ be from?"

"Beats me. Aside from the discolouration, it looked like it had healed, which is what's puzzling me. But it panned out from a vein, so maybe it was some kind of spider. At any rate, he may have been dying even before he was killed."

Emma paused a moment. "Keep me posted on that," she finished. He nodded before returning to the table. When she grabbed the report from his office and went back upstairs, she was suddenly a lot less hungry.

* * *

_Emma,_

_Before you read any further, I want you to know that I take this very seriously. I wanted to get the cartel bit out before we talked about this, or I may not have been able to._

_I want you to have dinner with me. There's something between us, and this morning confirmed that I need to see you again, not just as my partner. I don't want to risk being seen, so if you would, come to my apartment around 6:00 tonight. I promise to have you back by a decent hour._

_And yes, I know this isn't allowed. That's why I'm writing it this way—it's the least traceable thing I could think of. Incinerate this when you're through if you'd like. I don't expect a response, but I will be expecting you—please, Emma, just this once, do something reckless._

_G_

The letter burned a hole through her forehead as she stared at it on the train home.

She'd been about to read it when Graham had brought her lunch by, but after she got back from talking with Dr. Whale, she'd buried herself in the file he gave her and had forgotten about it until she was out the door. Graham had hesitated when he said goodbye that day, looking at her a little longer than usual, and that's when she'd remembered. When she read it on the train, she thanked every deity she could think of she hadn't read it in the office. Being even _more_ paralyzed for the rest of the day was the last thing she'd needed.

6:00 was less than an hour from then. It was also about the time Henry would be getting home from soccer, which left her a disconcertingly short amount of time to think this through. This was a _really_ bad idea, that much she knew, but it seemed so did Graham. Normally, two people coming to that kind of conclusion on their own would point to a firm _no. But this is Graham,_ she reasoned—and she trusted him. All the same, the concern she'd felt in her gut that morning had turned to full-on worry, and by the time she was unlocking her apartment, she felt a tension headache pulling at her temples and had to take a few Advil to stop it in its tracks.

"Henry?" She called, knowing he wasn't home yet. _Just to be sure._ She ran a hand over her face.

_He's expecting me,_ she rationalised. _He didn't really leave me a choice._ Yet she also knew he would forgive her if she didn't come. He knew her. But all the same, she didn't want to do that to him.

That and she wanted to distract herself. Every so often, the image of Liam's body under the examination light bore into her mind, and with it, the feeling of dread she'd had when she first found him. That on top of her worry and her nascent headache had her feeling more than a little sick. Graham lived near the theatre district, a good twenty minutes from her, so she'd have to move quickly—she blow-dried her hair to get the bump from her ponytail out and sent Henry a text before changing.

—_Hey, kiddo – I have to take care of some things for work tonight, so I'll be home late, but not too late. Shouldn't be past 8 or 8:30. I'm leaving some things out for dinner. Love you_

—_P.S. My turn to do the dishes_

She missed the 5:40 train, which meant it was ten after by the time she reached Graham's neighbourhood. It was another five minutes to his building from the stop. She swore at her choice of footwear, pulling her hair over one shoulder and pausing before she knocked at his door—

—Which opened before she could raise her hand. "Emma," he said simply, relief washing over his face. "I heard you coming up the stairs. Please, come in." The urgency was still there as he held the door for her—and though he knew better, he couldn't help but glance behind her as he closed the door to make sure she was alone. Luckily, her back was to him.

She turned. "What's this about, Graham?"

"I was going to ask you this morning, but I thought better of it." He ran a hand through his hair. "Hence, the letter. There's no use avoiding it now."

He stepped closer to her, placing a hand on her arm, staring intently into her eyes. "Emma, I'm so attracted to you it hurts. And I don't really care if you don't feel the same right now, because you could if you'd let yourself. I needed somewhere safe, with no pretences. Just to try. And I'm not going to burden you with this. I just needed to say it." He stepped back toward the kitchen, releasing her arm and smiling. "Want anything to drink?"

"I saw the Merlot on the counter," she replied, a bit shaky.

But he was right. He didn't burden her—he didn't expect anything, but he didn't hide it, either. He touched her freely, but he didn't cross any lines, and she found his happiness so contagious that she couldn't help but _enjoy_ herself as they shared the meal. She even complimented his remarkable cooking.

As the evening became night and they finished the wine, Emma stood to bring her plate to the counter, but Graham stopped her. "Let me take care of it," he said. "I know you need to be back soon."

"I told Henry no later than 8:30."

"Really soon, then," he said a little sadly. "I want to show you back, but he'll be there."

Emma nodded. "I can't tell him yet."

"I know."

As she stood to collect her things, he took her hands again. She looked at him.

"Emma, thank you," he said. "I want to kiss you, but I won't. Not until you say. You've been reckless enough for one day." He pulled her closer, a hand on her side and the other behind her head as he kissed her forehead. "Come back again Friday. We don't need to talk about it again unless you say so."

* * *

_Believe it or not, the first part of this chapter was actually about 5x more convoluted and incomprehensible than it is now when I originally wrote it. I was neck-deep in finance research for a book I was helping edit at the time and couldn't seem to separate work from play…it was painful, ha._

_Things about to get weird in here. Hook returns next chapter. Hold on to your hats, cats_—_we're just getting started._

**_Terms:_**

_Forecasting: this is the same sense as weather forecasting, but for a business. Neal works for an investment firm - they'd basically be predicting their performance next quarter given their performance in the current one and in the past, etc.  
_

_Acquisition: the textbook definition is one company buying or getting another company in order to build on its strengths or weaknesses. I prefer to think of it as two amoeba: amoeba A glomps amoeba B and starts transfusing itself into amoeba B; B ends up with B and A inside, if it isn't entirely swallowed by A (which it often is, in which case A just gets bigger). Don't tell your Business professor I said that._

_Portfolio: a company's collection of assets, which can be financial products, capital (i.e. material stuff, like buildings), or services. Usually, though, it's used in the financial sense (i.e. my investment portfolio is my collection of stocks, bonds, etc)._

_The Exchange: The New York Stock Exchange._

_Rozerem: a semi-popular prescription sleep aid._

_Angel investor: an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up (or, in this case, saves one from falling apart)._

_Also, in plain English, Neal and Spencer are discussing an offer for Neal to be the "angel investor" in a sleep drug to make sure it continues to trial on schedule. At the same time, Neal, being a mostly intelligent human being, is wondering why Spencer himself didn't do so, especially when it seems so likely the drug will be successful. Neal decides to bring the offer to his superiors at Reul Ghorm anyway, and they all climb on board.  
_


	4. The Return

**AN: **So, I promised in chapter one that I was going to try not to have any really long author's notes mid-series. The thing is, I had a bit of a rough week last week. Not two hours after I posted the last chapter, I learned that one of my 14 classmates in high school—with whom I spent the better part of 9 hours a day, 5 days a week for four years in the IB and basically considered a brother—passed away on January 10th. Still don't know what happened. I'm just praying it wasn't suicide.

Not long after that, then, I had a reviewer let me know they've quit the story. I decided to re-do the author's note in the first chapter partly for that reason—because this story is a bit unusual, I feel it's fair to let you know what you're getting into before you start. So that's what the new note does. If anyone else wants to give me negative feedback, I honestly welcome it, same as positive.

Lastly, I'm updating a day early because of my day tomorrow. After taking my husband to the airport at 4 a.m., I have a bunch of meetings before lunch that start as soon as I get back. Being an adult is hard, guys. #grownuplife

If you pray, I'd appreciate your prayers for my friend's family. And maybe for me, too.

* * *

**Chapter Four  
**_The return_

By the time Emma had made it home that evening, her thoughts were downright tumultuous. There was the file, which was still bothering her; on top of that, dinner had been perfect, and that was precisely the problem. Romantic gestures aside, it, _this_, was impossible without one or both of them seriously paying the price. She couldn't do that to Graham. And, if she was being honest, she couldn't do it to herself. Something like that would stay with her, and she had Henry to think about.

All the same, it had been nice to think about something other than work for once.

It shouldn't have surprised her that sleep was elusive that night. Slipping into her insomniac thought spiral was easy as indulging the worries building woodpeckers' tunnels in her mind, and once she slipped once it was nearly impossible to recover. It was just before midnight the first time she caught herself, just after two a.m. the second. That time, however, she was ready; before the insomnia struck, she pulled the blanket of black nothingness over the shutters of her mind and felt herself slip away.

When she awoke, the sun was blaring through the trees. She swore, levering herself up as soon as she realised—only to find that beneath her hands wasn't the cotton of her bed sheets but the sand of Neverland's shoreline.

"What the hell?!—"

"Thank God, you're back—"

"You!" She pushed herself away. "Why are _you_ here again, that doesn't make any sense—"

"Do you have any idea how long I've been looking for you?" He shouted. "Bloody hell, when you disappeared like that I thought I wouldn't get a chance to tell you again—"

"Why the fuck am I here—"

"I brought you here!" He shook his head as she pushed to her feet and ran his hand through his hair. "Well, you have to think of it, but in a manner of speaking—"

"Don't play games with me, buddy, you have no idea who you're dealing with—"

"Actually," he interrupted without pausing, the urgency buried under a sudden, teasing sarcasm—"that's the thing, love, I do. You see, I've lost something—"

"And _why_ do you think I can help you?"

"Because that's what I wished for." He stepped closer, and she paused.

"What…?"

He closed their distance further. "I told you last time, before you ran off—you can have whatever you want here." He raised his hook and pushed a lock of her hair back. "I wanted to know why my brother was dead."

She jerked away and stepped back. "I've never killed anyone, if that's what you're wondering." _And it's true. I deal with the aftermath._

When he didn't approach her again, she paused. He looked at her pointedly, asking the question before he spoke. "Then who are you?"

Emma narrowed her eyes. "You first."

"Well, alright then—my name's Killian Jones. My brother is Liam—"

"No. What the _hell?"_ She swore, loudly, interrupting him, wishing for something to hit. "You've got to be _kidding me—"_

"Actually I'm quite serious," he intoned, warning dripping through every word.

"No…" she repeated, looking at him. "…Killian, that's not possible. His case landed in my precinct yesterday, you _can't_ be—"

"—The officer working on his case," he finished. His eyes lit with realisation. "Of course." He paused a moment, thinking, taking it in. "Of course. I wished to know why my brother was dead, so, the officer working on his case. That's brilliant! What is your name?"

"Emma Swan."

"Well, Emma, I need you to do something for me."

"We're _going_ to find who did this, if that's what you're wondering—"

"—Don't disappear like that again," he finished.

"What?" She froze. "…I can't stay here, we'll never find—"

"—No," he interrupted, stepping toward her. "I mean, don't run away. Now that you know who I am," he shook his head disbelievingly. "I told you, I've been looking for you for _weeks._ You can tell me what's happening outside—"

"—_Weeks?_" She interjected. "Killian, it's been a few _hours._ I was here just last night."

"I _would_ get the short end of that stick," he grumbled, mostly to himself.

"And besides, this doesn't even make sense. This could be a fluke. It's not like recurring dreams are unheard of—"

"—Tell me how many recurring dreams you've had that plague you like memories." He left no room for discussion. "I don't know _why_ this is happening, but just trust it. My brother is _dead_. Give me at _least_ that courtesy."

She paused, took several deep breaths, and nodded. The events of the previous day swam back over her and threatened to overwhelm her. "Okay."

"Okay _what_?"

"Okay, I'll let you know what I find. If I ever come back here." She turned to look at him. "Is that what you want?"

An expression that almost looked like longing came over his features. She was struck by its resemblance to Graham's. "Evidently, yes."

And then she woke up.

* * *

Emma was jarred awake by the sound of her alarm clock. It was the first time she'd slept through until 5:00 in months—she felt a shiver as the light, warm sand gave way to the cold of her corner loft, dark quiet of the sleeping city threatening to push her back into unconsciousness. She sat up, grunted, and reached for her running shoes. When she thought about the dream, though, her stomach swam.

Killian's voice reverberated in her head throughout her entire run as she tried to make sense of it. That was precisely the problem—it _didn't_ make sense_,_ and no amount of rationalisation would make a dream pirate's claim to be the brother of her murder victim any less surreal. Even more alarming was that he was right, at least about the one verifiable claim he could make—the dream _did_ plague her like a memory, and she recalled him with such lucidity he could have been someone she'd seen every day of her life. _Minus the clothing,_ she thought, smirking at her own defensive sarcasm. _Not that mine was much better._

The first thing she did that morning upon early arrival to work was to see if he even existed. The whole thing could have very easily been a fluke, and that would have almost made her feel better but for the fact she'd encountered him _again,_ not only that but in the same place. One or the other happening again was normal. Encountering the same person in the same place twice was still just coincidence, but one that, like finding Liam had been in the first place, left her far more troubled than it should have.

"Of course he exists," Emma muttered to herself. Either he existed, or he was the subject of a very elaborate fraud scheme: Facebook, LinkedIn profile, corporate biography, expert testimony, a few papers, even a surprisingly sassy Twitter feed. She scrolled back up to the corporate page and paused.

"Huh." _So they worked together._ The page belonged to a firm called Roger &amp; Stern, which, as its _About _page clarified, made up a third of the Voyager Group. She skimmed through the page—an international corporate consulting firm that specialised in economic forecasting, data engineering, and legal counsel. She wasn't exactly sure what that meant, but made a note on the file just in case.

_What does he do?_ She clicked back to the _Our People_ page, scrolling down until his startlingly blue eyes were staring out at her in an expression she would almost describe as menacing. She sat back, crossed her arms, and stared at it several moments, until Ruby's arm depositing her coffee on her desk snapped her out of her reverie.

"Who's that?" She asked.

"Hm? Oh, background," she answered before minimizing the window and going back to her report, reaching for her coffee. "More like a crazy suggestion of Graham's that might actually lead somewhere."

"Damn, I like my theory better."

"Do I want to know?" Ruby answered with a wink before heading off to her own station.

And at that point, she was stuck. The logical course of action would have been to call his office, perhaps search local news records to make sure he was even _alive_, but something troubled her. If he _was _alive, there was the minor problem of whether he'd know who she was. His being Liam's brother made calling him a reasonable move, but if he wasn't a reasonable suspect—which, given his residence in Ireland, she could safely assume he wasn't, barring a family grudge his tone toward Liam last night suggested didn't exist—then what?

She swallowed. No matter how much she tried to rationalise herself out of not needing to call him, the matter remained. Even worse, as a relative to the deceased, he was supposed to be one of the first people she contacted. In all likelihood someone else on the European side had beat her to it—as she picked up the phone, reminded herself for the second time that he might not even remember her, and dialled the international number, she prayed that was the case, as her having to be the one who broke the news of his brother's death to him was one more thing she didn't need.

—"_You've reached the desk of Killian Jones. I'm not available to take your call right now, but if you'll leave your name and number, I'll return your call as soon as I get the chance." _

_Get it together, Emma._

"Good afternoon, Mr. Jones," she began a little uncertainly. "My name is Detective Emma Swan of the New York Police Department, and I'm one of the officers handling your brother's domestic case. I need to talk with you, so if you could please give me a call back at this number…"

As she left the line for her desk phone, a deep sense of dread locked onto her stomach. What if he didn't know? What if something happened to him? What if he wasn't even in the country, and what if she wasn't even allowed to call him in the first place…? This case wasn't like any other she'd had before, and the game was different, so technical, and—

"Emma, are you alright?" Graham. She jumped in her seat. "You look like you've run over a dog."

"Graham," she sighed with relief, running a hand over her face. "No, it's…nothing." She turned to him. "I just got off the phone with Liam Jones' brother."

"What did he say?"

"He wasn't in," Emma answered. "I'm not sure whether to be relieved or worried. They worked together."

"I'm glad you checked that," he answered, sighing himself. "That could be something, but if it is, it's pushing the limits of our jurisdiction…"

"What would we even _do_ with information from a foreign financial firm?" She concurred, looking away again. "But that's not the problem. He wasn't there, and it hasn't been _that_ long—what if he didn't know—"

"—Emma, _don't_ take this on yourself." He stepped into her cubicle, meaning to reach for her but stopping himself. "If he doesn't, you haven't done anything wrong. Soon he'll thank you. And as for the other bit," he stepped back again, running a hand through his hair. "I figure that if he'd been here on an H-1B, then they have to have an American subsidiary, or something like it. You know, the one place a financial data group would have a branch like that would be here in the city—in fact, may I?" He gestured at her computer, and she rolled her chair back, intentionally directing her focus away from his proximity while he typed something into a search engine.

"I thought so," he said after a moment, turning to face her. "They have an office on Cortlandt. Let's find out if this is in our jurisdiction, and if it is, we'll go talk to them this afternoon. We'll figure this out." The look he gave her was meant to reassure her, so she nodded.

"Yeah, okay. I think I need to do some research on what these two actually _do_ for a living before we go try and talk to them."

"Well, I'll see you next week, then," Graham laughed a bit as he left. She rolled her eyes.

* * *

The man they were to see at the Cortlandt office was a lawyer named Mr. Gold. Evidently he was a bit old-fashioned, as not only had the web site turned up nothing about him, it didn't have a page for the legal arm of the Americas branch at all. They were walking blind, and as Emma and Graham were shown into the lobby (it was locked from outside), they found it empty but for an older man with a cane. He stood serenely, resting both hands on it.

"You must be our friends from the precinct," he said as he walked toward them. Emma noticed he walked with a limp. "Come in, we'll go up to my office."

His tone was flat, guarded, not unfriendly, but quite evidently not trusting, either. He'd looked at them like they were suspicious—as though he, not they, represented the law.

"Why the personal welcome?" Graham asked his back as they neared the elevator. Gold turned, levelled a _look _at him.

"Well, as you may be aware, one of our own was murdered only a couple of days ago. It's merely a precaution." That ambiguous tone again. As the elevator dinged its arrival, Emma narrowed her eyes.

"We're on your side, Mr. Gold," she warned.

He responded immediately, "As of yet we're not sure there are sides to be _had,_ detective."

She flinched. That was unexpected. But he was right—technically speaking, he hadn't yet cleared _himself_ of suspicion, either. His office was on one of the upper floors, which didn't surprise her. What _did_ was the gold lettering on the curved centre wall reading _Miller &amp; Gold Associates,_ and the reminder that this was serious enough to get one of the partners involved invoked the sense of dread she'd been feeling now and then since finding the body.

Graham shut the door behind them.

"Liam Jones was one of our best data engineers," Gold began as he took a seat. "And from what I understand, he'd picked up on an unusual amount of perfect predictions in front of major market disturbances that traced back to a single source."

"Insider trading," Graham interjected. "No one's that lucky."

"Exactly," he paused.

"Unfortunately," he pulled his focus back to Graham after lingering a moment more on Emma, "he died before we could identify who was responsible. From the standpoint of the investigation, it's a minor setback. There are others just as good as Jones who will finish it. But of course, this isn't about the investigation." The smile on half his mouth held no humour or mirth.

Emma nodded, her gaze at the table before raising her eyes to Gold's. "There are other ways to stop a search."

Graham paused, thinking a moment. "They were trying to send a message." After another moment, he concurred with Gold: "This might be bigger than the investigation."

"That's where I was thinking you could help me," Gold replied. Graham nodded.

"If we can establish that whoever killed Liam also wanted to bring your firm down?" Emma asked.

"That, or even just who killed Liam. It would give you your motive."

Emma narrowed her eyes again. _Something's off. We can't do this. If we found who killed Liam and told Gold, Gold might go after—_

"Now, Mr. Humbert, for the matter we discussed earlier—" Her eyes snapped back open and she spun her head toward Graham so fast her neck cricked.

"Yes, I have it." She saw him reach into his briefcase. He pulled out the case file and opened to the section on the Brooklyn pawn shop. "I'll need to use your photocopier, if you don't mind."

"Graham, you can't—"

"Yes, right this way," Gold continued. He stepped around her chair and held the door; they both ignored her.

* * *

"_Captain, I need to talk to you."_

"_I know you do," Regina replied a little solemnly, looking up from her work. "Detective, I know about you and Emma."_

_Graham sighed and ran a hand through his hair, studying the red-streaked maps on her wall a moment before turning to her. "What's going to happen?"_

"_I was going to ask you the same thing," she replied. "I know what's been going on between you two. And I know it's not serious yet, but Graham, do you understand what you're doing?"_

"_Yes, and I haven't talked with her about it, but I think…" he paused for breath before continuing. "…I think I need to go back to Interpol."_

"_I think that's a good idea." _

_She wasn't angry, but before he could ask why she was doing this, she continued. "If it were Robin, and we were in this position…" she paused a moment, nodded. "I think I'd do the same. You're our best detective, Graham. I hate to lose you. But losing _two_ of our best would be worse, and you know that's what would happen if the Assistant Chief were to find out about this."_

"_You're right." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'll connect with them and see if I can get a transfer back. But Captain, would you do something for me?"_

_He looked pained. Her face softened. "Of course."_

"_Make sure she gets a good partner."_

_She smiled a bit, sadly. "Only the best." He'd turned to leave, but she continued. "And Graham—" he turned back. "I would suggest waiting after the transfer to keep out any suspicion. Good luck."_

_As the door clicked shut, Regina took the small, framed photo on her desk in her hands. It was taken on their first anniversary—Robin, herself, and his son, her adopted boy, Roland. They were both looking at him, swinging the four-year-old between their hands. His contagious smile beamed at the camera and reached her eyes before she set it down again._

* * *

_I'd be lying to you all (all 10 of you) if I said negative reviews don't bother me. Of course they do—writing is hard, and it's easy to forget that when you're reading. I know I do. All the same, I do appreciate negative reviews, because at least the person _told_ me they didn't like the story. And this one? Good gracious. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea. It's a convoluted mess right now, and it's going to get worse before it gets better. _

_My problem, I think, is that I like to make people think. It's what I do. And this is a story about thinking—about thinking that there's never only one way things could have gone. I want to entertain you, but I also want to royally piss you off and make you go WHAT IN THE WORLD and maybe smile at your computer later on in the story and ultimately, maybe, feel just a little bit satisfied that you read the whole thing and didn't give up on me._

_So maybe I'm also asking you to have a little faith in me? Up to you._

_Good, bad, ugly, I want to hear it ALL. You know what to do. x_

**_Terms:_**

_Partner: law firms are often called things like "Potter, Granger &amp; Weasley LLP" - the partners in this firm are Potter, Granger, and Weasley, any they're the ones who technically "own" the firm.  
_

_Insider trading:__ using information that's only available to your clique of traders to buy &amp; sell on the stock exchange. A lot of basic info about stock performance is supposed to be publicly available - insider trading is the stock exchange equivalent of blood doping.  
_


	5. The Discovery

**AN: **Warning straight up: no Hook this chapter. (Aw.)

Another warning straight up: there is a substantial amount of Gremma this chapter.

Maybe that's not a warning. Up to the beholder, I guess?

* * *

**Chapter Five  
**_The discovery_

The Thursday evening he told her he was going back to Interpol, Emma went straight to Mary Margaret's after work without even texting to let her former roommate know she was coming.

Mary Margaret answered the door with her arms full of baby. "Emma," she observed, looking surprised but not upset.

"Can I hold him?"

"Please, my arms are about to fall off." She handed Emma the swaddled bundle. "He was crying and crying earlier, and he didn't sleep until I held him for a while, but if I put him down he wakes right up again." She turned to her friend. "Is everything alright?"

"Is David here?"

"No, he's still at work."

Emma looked at the sleeping baby, then her friend. "Graham's going back to Interpol and didn't tell me."

"Oh, Emma."

"And that's not even the best part." She paused, lowering her voice almost to a whisper. "Two days ago, he asked me to dinner."

Mary Margaret gasped. "But, that's _completely_ against protoco—"

"I know! And so does he!" She winced. "He left a letter. Hand-written, in my file, that said he knew it was wrong but '_do something reckless.'_ So he asked me to dinner that night._"_ She started pacing a bit, rocking the baby as she did, while Mary Margaret sat on the arm of the sofa.

"Did you go?"

"Yes!" She adjusted the blanket over his head. "Yes, I did something stupid and irresponsible. I don't know why I did it. But I know he told me, 'Emma, I'm so attracted to you it hurts.' And he said he wanted to kiss me."

"But he didn't."

"No, he said it had to be my choice." She sighed, and Mary Margaret held out her arms to take the baby again. Once she did, Emma ran a hand through her hair.

"Well," Mary Margaret began, "I guess that explains why he left the department. If he knew you couldn't be together while he was there, he wanted to give you his best shot…?"

"That's what I can't figure out." She leaned against the chair opposite the sofa. "We're in the middle of a massive case, and he tells me this _now._ I don't know whether to be flattered or hurt."

Mary Margaret didn't respond immediately. Emma watched her friend's brow furrow in concentration.

"Did you enjoy your time the other day?" She asked after a few moments.

"More than I thought I would," Emma responded immediately. She didn't have to think about that. "It's so _easy_ to be around him."

"Do you feel the same way at all toward him?"

"I don't know," she sighed, recalling his words from that night. "I think I could if I let myself."

"You don't want to let yourself, do you?" Mary Margaret responded, a small, sad smile playing at her lips.

"I don't know how to," Emma answered after a moment. "He's been my partner for so long, and this has all happened really fast. I can't just _throw_ myself into this."

There was more Mary Margaret wanted to say, she could tell—_can't, or won't? _She saw the unspoken question in her friend's eyes. But it was so easy for her to ask that. Her own relationship with David had been, in many ways, just as unlikely: he'd come to her rescue when she'd had a flat tire on the way back from an away football game with their rival school. David had been on his way home when he passed her. His team had just won, but even though her car proudly displayed enemy colours, he'd felt benevolent. And from there it was history, the love between those two as close to happily ever after as it got this side of a fairy tale.

"I think you should think about it," Mary Margaret offered. "His leaving the department is evidence of what he's willing to give up to be with you."

"No pressure," Emma quipped. Mary Margaret smiled.

"And you don't have to make a decision today. Don't push him away, though. I think you owe it to yourself to try."

"But that's the thing. There's still part of me that's hurt that he didn't tell me any of this until he'd already made a decision. I dunno, isn't trust supposed to be important?"

"Crucial," Mary Margaret concurred. When Emma looked at her again, she could see she was putting her own true love bias aside and thinking it through before she spoke again. "I really don't like that he didn't talk to you first. But if there's anyone who can figure out why, Emma, it's you. You can do this."

"You make it sound like another case," Emma grumbled.

* * *

It was Friday morning before she heard back from Neal. He called as soon as she got into work—when she heard her desk line ringing after noticing a missed call from him on her cell, she set Ruby's coffee on her still-vacant desk and ran the rest of the way to her own.

"This is Detective Swan," she answered.

"Emma, it's Neal. Sorry I haven't called you back until now, it's been crazy the last couple of days. You were asking before about the Voyager Group?"

"Yeah, a lead we've been following," she said cryptically. "Do you know anything about them?"

He hesitated. "Can we meet in person to talk about it?"

"Neal…" she paused.

"It's really something I need to tell you where we won't be recorded," he continued only slightly less cryptically than she had.

She was the one who hesitated, then. "Meet me at the bookstore on Essex in half an hour," she answered, and hung up. He'd know the one—Henry went there all the time.

As she was leaving again, Graham was on his way in.

"Emma," he acknowledged, laying a hand on her arm. "Where are you going?"

"Meeting someone about the case," she replied. "We'll talk about this later. This isn't the time."

"You'll still come tonight?"

She sighed, a tentative affirmation lacing itself through her tone. "We need to talk about this at some point. Later. I need to go." When he released her, something like relief came over him briefly, but she didn't see.

* * *

Neal beat her there. "I was going to buy you coffee, but…" Emma smiled a bit, holding up her half-finished drink from that morning.

"I appreciate it. I'll get us a table."

When he joined her, she had a tape recorder on the table. Neal eyed it pointedly.

"It's for my own use. I won't even put it on my personal computer."

"Can I get that in writing?" Neal joked, but it fell flat. "Okay, well. Voyager."

The recorder was already running. "What do you know about them?"

"Can we start with how you're connected to them?"

"I can't say very much about that, but the man whose murder I'm investigating used to work for them. Before."

"You're on the Liam Jones case?"

"How did you—?"

"The _New York Times,_" Neal answered with a slight chuckle before lowering his voice. "Before that, I found out from my father."

"Your father?"

"He works for Voyager," Neal answered. Emma raised a brow. "Well, kind of. It's a subsidiary, Miller &amp; Gold. He's an attorney."

And then it clicked. Emma's eyes shot open. "Neal…is your father the 'Gold' part of Miller &amp; Gold?"

Neal ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah, that's him."

She wanted to hit her head on the table for not putting the pieces together earlier. Neal picked up on it. "…Do you…know him?"

"Fuck…"

"_That's_ a yes…what did he—he's not a suspect, is he?"

She ran a hand over her eyes, pausing. "I don't know. I don't think so. We can't say yes or no yet."

Another wave of connections came to her then, promising no less relief. She paused for several moments, heavily weighing the potential consequences of what she was about to say before deciding to take the plunge.

_He's already done the same thing._

"My partner gave him part of our case file before we left his office on Wednesday." She swept her hands over her hair, fighting the urge to pull it out.

"And my father has confidential police evidence that can get you both fired." Emma nodded, tempted to add that Graham was leaving. She decided to keep her mouth shut. "Do you know why he has it?"

"It sounded like Graham made some kind of arrangement with him before we arrived."

Neal laughed. "Typical. My father and his deals. That was probably the condition of the meeting."

"That's so illegal it's ridiculous. It can get _him_ fired, even if he _is_ a partner."

"Do you know what part of the file he has?"

"Yeah, something about a pawn shop in Brooklyn owned by a guy named William Smee. The knife that killed Liam was stolen from there." She was divulging too much, but at this point, with what he already knew, it didn't matter.

And at that point, Neal was laughing. Silently, but she saw his shoulders shake—when she noticed, he shook his head in apology.

"Sorry. This is just too ridiculous. Smee has been on my father's shit list for _years_, ever since he swindled him out of a family heirloom. It was a set of music pipes, about this big," he held his hands about six inches apart. "He got it back, but by paying for it, and I actually think I remember him saying 'He'll pay me back the rest of his life' or something just as bad. In his spare time, he manages a hedge fund."

Emma nearly spat her drink.

"So, were you just wanting to know about Voyager, or should I tell you some about Excalibur as well?"

"I'm guessing that's the hedge fund?"

"The only thing better would have been to call it the Holy Grail." Neal sighed. "Rare objects collector, right? It's pretty speculative, as far as they go. Excalibur deals in a lot of risky shit: Arctic oil drilling, plutonium batteries, cold fusion. I can't tell you where they keep it all, but I do know my father's been waiting for them to do something illegal for _years._"

"No luck, I'm guessing?"

Neal shook his head. "Nada." Neal paused a moment. "It's groups like Voyager that keep an eye on the Excaliburs of the world, kind of like the sheriffs in the Old West. A lot of people in the business hate them. My father's involvement in Voyager is that for reasons I'm still not sure about, he teamed up with a lawyer he hates named Cora Miller to make Miller &amp; Gold the legal arm of Voyager. Since Voyager is based in the UK, a lot of what they do is in Europe, but they both have offices in both places. Normally Cora focuses on the US side while my father deals with Europe.

"And on that note, my father's Achilles' heel, should you ever need to know this," he looked at the tape recorder, then Emma, "is that he can't practice in the US. It kills him. All he can do is advise. Why are you writing this down—isn't that what that's for?"

Emma stopped the notes she'd been furiously scribbling after a couple of seconds and looked up. "It's quicker to access than the tape. I'll need to tell my partner about this."

"Right," Neal sat back. "I almost forgot this was an investigation. On that note, I guess I should add that in the event my father's done anything stupid, I'll still cooperate. I don't want you to take the fall for something he did."

She finished writing, nodded, and looked up. "Thanks, Neal. This helps a lot."

"Sure," he finished, standing up. "I need to get going before the floor opens, but Emma," he reached out for a hug, which she accepted. "It's good to see you."

"You too. My best to Tamara."

"Tell Henry his dad says 'Hey,'" he waved, and left.

The rest of the morning was spent digging up everything she could on Smee. With his name connected to Excalibur as opposed to the pawn shop, a whole new set of search results turned up—surprisingly few, however, connected the two together, she noted with a laugh upon seeing two articles use the same photo of him.

She didn't see much of Graham at all that afternoon, however. At one point she'd seen him leaving Regina's office looking worse for the wear, but she'd turned back to her work before she could think about it. At another, she'd heard him on the phone with Interpol, but he was speaking French, so she couldn't tell what he was talking about.

_Better get used to it,_ she thought. She'd worked without a partner before; in her division, it was fairly common to find both solo detectives and pair teams, and Graham had been her first partner in the three years she'd been at the precinct. Even though this was more up his alley than hers, she now had new information from Neal on top of everything she'd already found. _I'll be fine._

* * *

By the time she got off work that day, she'd nearly forgotten about her plans with Graham that evening. She had half a mind to cancel. The prospect was tempting. Henry had an away game, though, so she'd be alone until late unless she conjured something else to do.

But there weren't many options. Mary Margaret and David had a date, and Ruby liked to go out, which wasn't really her thing. She could watch a movie—_and fall asleep and dream of Neverland,_ she thought bitterly before deciding to just buck up and go.

"I don't know why I'm here," she told Graham when she arrived fifteen minutes late.

"I wondered if you would," he answered. Behind him, something that smelled way too good for the situation was sizzling on the stove. "I haven't finished the food yet; would you be able to help?"

It was a small relief that he'd expected her to be late. "I'll burn your kitchen down," she warned with a small smile. The words came out halfway a threat.

"I won't let you," he replied immediately, a threat of his own.

It was infuriatingly difficult to stay mad at him. Righteous anger or not, the need to appear useful was deeply ingrained in her psyche. She went to work immediately; he instructed her gently on what to do with the sprouts, browning them slightly on each side, coming up behind her to take the skillet off the heat when they were ready. While they never touched, it was almost unnerving to Emma that the banter between them suggested nothing of the magnitude of the changes that had happened since Tuesday. As he went to open the wine, she returned to the stove, stirring the sauce for the meat one more time before removing it from the heat.

When she turned around, she nearly dropped the pan. She felt the weight of his stare like an enormous wave. It made her shiver. "Careful," he'd said, smiling a bit, but not taking his eyes off her.

It didn't help. She made a sound of acknowledgement but felt unsteady as she made her way to the table and set the pan on a hot plate. A few moments later, he joined her. The moment dissolved slowly between them. Emma looked at her plate, the kitchen, his living room, anything to avoid his eyes.

This time, upon learning that Henry wouldn't be home until late, Graham let her help clean up once they were done. They still didn't touch. Both the matter of his leaving the department and the equally pleasant problem of his divulgence to Mr. Gold had been carefully avoided, and neither wanted to speak first. _The second is easier_, Emma thought. The weight of both topics was growing heavier in the silence while they did the dishes, so she started there.

"Graham, I need you to tell me." She saw him brace at first, then relax a bit. "Not why you're leaving. We do need to talk about that. But I spoke with an…old friend today," she hesitated a bit, there, "who, as it turns out, is Mr. Gold's son." _Which makes Gold Henry's grandfather. _She shuddered at the thought. "You gave Gold classified evidence?"

"Condition of the meeting," Graham replied after a moment, confirming her and Neal's suspicions. Emma nodded, but he wasn't done. "I realise in retrospect how dangerous that was. It could jeopardise us both, especially you, which is why," he reached for the towel hanging by Emma's face, "I'm staying on the case at Interpol, but in a different capacity. I've always done fraud, but now I'll be in intelligence, which provides a bit more flexibility. I've even been approved to take this to Europe if need be. I'll still be with you."

"Graham…"

He stopped what he was doing and turned to her.

"Emma, I need you to try to understand." He closed part of the gap between them, gripping the towel he was still holding so hard his knuckles were white. "I'm not leaving to get away from you, and I'm not leaving because I got carried away with excitement and gave classified information away either. I'm leaving because I want a chance with you." She inhaled sharply, but he wasn't done. "I can't have it the way we've been, and _yes,_ I would give seeing you every day for a chance to have it."

He tossed the cloth aside, the restraint he'd employed not to touch her all evening along with it. With one hand he held her hip, the other, the side of her head, threading his fingers through her hair. Emma froze, her heart racing, nodding very slightly both her understanding and acceptance. She searched his eyes and found a confusion of frustration, restraint, longing…and something else she couldn't identify.

But before she could think—before she could breathe—his lips were crashing down on hers.

* * *

She didn't sleep that night. Graham had apologised for the kiss—he'd taken her nod as a yes, hadn't meant to offend her or press her. She shook her head. That wasn't it.

"So it was a yes?" he'd said.

"I don't know yet," she'd replied. It was still too early to know. She ran a hand over her face, speaking through her fingers. "I need time to think about this, Graham. It's a lot."

In exchange, she'd let him accompany her home. It was only a bit after eight by the time they'd left—since his game was in New Jersey, Henry probably wouldn't be back until at least an hour from then. She invited him in, but he'd refused.

"I might not leave," he'd said.

He did, however, ask if he could kiss her again. That time she nodded. That time, when he kissed her, it was slow, almost languid, like they had all the time in the world.

"Goodnight, Emma," he'd said eventually.

Hence her current predicament. She laid on her back with the covers half-folded, staring up at the ceiling made blue-black by the lights outside. Henry was quiet when he came home. When she heard him open his door, she looked to the space below her own and watched the gold beam of light beneath it be extinguished.

For once, she _wanted_ to go back to Neverland. When she turned on her side and closed her eyes, she willed herself into unconsciousness and pictured its sand. She imagined the feeling of flying she'd felt the first day; she even thought of Killian. But behind that, all she could think of was the lingering feel of Graham's kiss.

* * *

_I read a buuuuunch of Gremma to get the old wheels turnin' as I was revising this chapter. Romance used to be pretty much all I wrote but it's been a while. Did it work? _

_It's interesting, I noticed in my reading that a lot of Gremma fans don't like Killian, but on the other hand, most Captain Swan stories don't really acknowledge Graham one way or the other…me, I like both of them, and the idea of both Graham and Killian being present in Emma's life at the same time is intriguing. That's part of why I wrote this story in the first place. :) Conflict and villains, those are my things. _

_(What does THAT say about me? Ha.)_

_I am trying to be fair, though, so get ready for a lot of Killian next week. See you then._

**_Terms:_**

_Hedge fund: the result of a professional management firm organising an investment vehicle as a business that pools capital from a number of investors and investing in securities (stocks/bonds/etc) and other money-making things. Known for having exorbitantly high "pay to play" fees, these are the financial equivalents of yacht clubs. They're controversial because they aren't really regulated by the government the way banks and other "money firms" are.  
_

_Speculation (business): When you buy risky investments that might have a possibility of earning large profits but also pose a higher-than-average possibility of loss._

_Risk (y business): the possibility of inadequate profit or even loss due to factors that can't always be predicted (i.e. changing tastes, strikes, etc). Also a 1983 film with Tom Cruise._


	6. The Crisis

**A/N:** Scenes in italics are flashbacks. Just fyi.

* * *

**Chapter Six  
**_The crisis_

"_Trouble in paradise, Mr. Humbert?" Gold asked Graham once they'd left the office._

_Graham closed the door to the copy room before he replied. "In a manner of speaking." He opened the binder rings and removed the pages, laying them face-up in the tray. Gold was silent, waiting for him to elaborate._

_The detective complied. "We didn't talk about this," he continued once he'd started the machine, a wave of his hand indicating the file. "I couldn't tell her. She wouldn't have agreed. She's out of her league with this. She still hasn't put the pieces together."_

"_Could just be lack of practice, detective." The wink in Gold's eye went unexpressed. "You've been her partner for what, eight months, now? You've seen her work. You of anyone would know her potential."_

"_Potential, yes, but she has her comfort zones. This case is a different world to her. That's why she's stuck. She needs help. I intend to push her."_

"_And how do you intend to do that?"_

"_A number of ways. For one, by leaving the department." Graham grinned at the lawyer's quirked brow. "Beginning next week, she'll be handling this case alone. And before you question my telling you this, you'd need to know that anyway in case you require future contact with her."_

_The older man was now openly amused. "Oh? Anything else I may need to know?" _

"_Yes, there is." Graham turned, silently relieved he hadn't asked a question he could have asked, and took the finished sheets off the printer, handing them to Gold before putting the originals back where they belonged. He met the man's eyes. "If I'm not mistaken, you're her son's grandfather."_

_Gold's genuine surprise was the last thing he noted before turning to the door, carefully wiping the smile from his features before he stepped into the hallway._

* * *

Sleep never came. She was never fully aware of slipping into the half-sleep that characterised her insomnia, her mind whirring with the technicalities of the case and Graham leaving and everything Neal had told her that day. When she got up at 2:58 to go to the bathroom, she knew she hadn't slept.

She stared at her reflection in the mirror. If she went back there and _did_ fall asleep, it was Saturday, so she probably wouldn't be up until after Henry. Instead, she splashed cold water on her face and went back to her room, rooting in her briefcase for the tape recorder. The notes she'd managed to take when she'd met with Neal were pretty sparse; she figured she'd stay awake by supplementing them. _I'll thank myself for this later._

Emma took a seat at the counter, flipping the device's switch to 'play' and putting her earphones in so she wouldn't wake Henry. She fast-forwarded through the first part of their conversation, picking up where she explained which part of the file Graham had given Gold, and began writing. It wasn't long, however, before her letters began to slant, the battle to keep her eyes open ever fiercer. And before Neal could explain his father's Achilles' heel, Killian was waiting for her on the shores of Neverland.

She blinked at the sunlight.

"I thought you might be back soon," he began, turning to face her. "Just a couple of days longer than the last time."

"Wow, you're actually _right_." The sarcasm dripped off her words as she brushed sand off her jeans, starting to walk toward him. He smirked.

"Well, if you _want _to be technical, it's still been a number of weeks."

"I might take your word on that," she finished to herself, bitterly. She stopped in the shade, considering her state.

It was with mild astonishment that she noted that even now, amidst everything that had happened over the last few days, her preoccupations in the outside world felt like they belonged to someone else. It was as though someone had been telling her about what _they_ were dealing with as opposed to it being her own life. And it had been _way_ too long. In this dream world, without the heavy context and constant pressures around her from all sides, the case seemed like a dream. It hadn't even been a week, really, since she'd come across Liam's body, and all of this was happening so fast she barely had time to ask questions. Hell, she barely had time to think at _all_—this was her first case of this magnitude, and was she even on the right track…? The business world was as foreign to her as another language. And at that, she nearly laughed, having learned only yesterday that her partner was multilingual.

_What else don't I know about him?_

Even in this world, though, thinking of Graham made her stomach twist. There was just too _much_ to think about with him—any one of the things he'd done that week would have been more than enough to keep her up at night. But of course, they'd come all at once. He'd betrayed her trust, giving away classified evidence without even _asking_ if it was a bad idea; he'd betrayed their friendship, walking out on their partnership, again, without talking to her. And all of it because he was in love with her. _That_ was the kicker. It had supposedly been in the euphoria of the case that he'd slipped with regard to the evidence, but that hadn't seemed right. Like there was _still_ something he wasn't telling her.

It wouldn't have been a surprise, really. Not after everything else he'd done. The more she thought about it, the more used she began to feel. And yet, there was the matter of how he was when they were at his apartment, when their walls were down. She couldn't even _think_ about being angry with him then, not when he was laying himself so bare.

Still, she couldn't seem to do the same, couldn't answer when he asked if he could kiss her—

"Sounds like it's been rough. What have you found?"

She started to attention at the sound of Killian's voice, quickly gathering her thoughts before answering.

"A lot of things that don't make sense." After a moment, she started pacing, counting them off on her fingers: "Murder weapon is stolen from a pawn shop owned by a guy who manages a hedge fund. Victim works for a firm whose top attorney has a grudge against the guy who owns the pawn shop. Nothing connects to anything else relevant, it's all just pieces. And now, my partner is _leaving_, so I have to figure all this shit out on my own." She ran a hand through her hair, stopping. "I'm sorry. I know your brother just died. This is all just crazy."

"I know. I wish I could help."

She looked at him sideways. "Can't you?"

"I'm afraid this arrangement of ours is a bit one-sided," he answered, rising to his feet as well. "Time is different for me, here. A couple of days for you are several weeks for me. I've had a lot of time to think, and no matter what I do," he rapped his hook on an extended branch of the tree trunk he'd been sitting on, "I can't recall anything specific, only that he's dead. That's why I thought you could help."

"That doesn't make sense," she replied. "I have my memories on both sides. It's like you said before: I remember our conversations like they really happen. I remember everything. And I know you really exist—my partner can vouch for me, I left you a fucking _voicemail_ just a couple days ago."

"I take it I haven't replied?"

"I hadn't thought about it again until now." She laughed once, bitterly. "You know, it's funny. I was freaking out to Graham after I left it, like I'd done something I shouldn't or you didn't know or something. That feels like it was _weeks_ ago. I'm sorry I can't tell you more." She sighed.

His laugh held a bit more humour than hers as he came toward her. "I think the error is mine, if I haven't called you back yet. Circumstances aside, it's bad form to keep a lady waiting."

"Believe me, this lady understands plenty," she replied, looking down.

A collection of questions she knew he couldn't answer was quickly gathering in her mind. How did he get here? What _was_ Neverland, and why was it affecting them differently? How was it they were always able to find each other? And, for that matter, why did she always land in the same place?

Before they gathered too much more steam, she let one slip out.

"Did something happen to you that makes time different for you here?"

"Wish I could tell you, love," he said with a half-smile.

His voice came sounded nearer to her when he spoke that time, and as she realised it, she nearly jumped out of her skin. She hadn't even noticed him standing that close. He lifted her chin with his hook, enough to meet her eyes, before she flinched at its proximity and stepped back. His eyes were so blue she felt cold when she looked at them. "Careful with that," she said, weaker than she wanted to.

He smiled in response. After a few moments, he came up to her again, this time to her side, his hand safely on her upper back, and added:

"Well, if that's all that can be done on _that_ unpleasant matter for the time being, I want to show you something." He started walking them into the jungle.

"I could just leave if we're done."

"You could, but you haven't yet. So, while you're still here?" She rolled her eyes. He dropped his hand.

She didn't entirely trust him, but he wasn't _unpleasant _company. In fact, the farther they walked, Killian clearing the foliage aside with his hook, the more she noticed that despite the circumstances, and the apparent distance the island seemed to place between her and her real-world problems, being around him felt positively _light._ Graham's presence, though comfortable, had a weightiness about it, especially now that there were feelings involved. All this time, she'd thought that was something they had in common.

Eventually, though, as the dreamy lightness settled into her, she remembered the first time she'd been here, the feeling of bounding off the trees as though she'd been flying. She watched her travelling companion's advancing back a moment before a sly grin flashed across her features. She held back twenty feet, thirty, Killian absorbed in telling her of one of his discoveries about the island, when she ran, leapt, and flew over him, landing in a streak of red several paces in front and barely managing enough self-control to keep from doing it again.

"I'd wondered how much further into the jungle we'd go before you'd try that." He smirked.

"Can't do that at home," she quipped, smiling, a little out of breath. "Where is it we're going?"

"I want to find out if something is true," he answered ambiguously. The euphoria of flying still buzzing inside her, she didn't press. She'd know if something was wrong. She always did.

Eventually, the jungle began to thin. The soil became rockier. She wasn't sure how long they'd been walking—it could have been hours, but it was hard to tell without a clear view of the sun. In front of them was a formidable wall of rock. When he began to climb it, though, she did press.

"Where are we going?" she asked again. He didn't look back at her, concentrated as he was on finding both footholds and places to put his hook. But he climbed adeptly.

"I have a theory, and I want to see if it's true," he answered, going silent again and pressing on until he reached a point where the boulder plateaued. Emma followed him up, wondering briefly why they couldn't just _fly_ up, taking his hand when he offered it. "I do want to help you with your search, but that's a bit difficult as long as I don't have my memories. There's a legend here of a healing spring. Up there." He pointed to the summit of a mountain that had been obscured thus far by trees and clouds. "It may not work, but it's the best I've got."

The path up was a bit tricky, and their conversation ebbed into companionable but focused silence as they slipped around hairpin turns and switchbacks. At one point she'd needed to grab hold of a vine that snaked its way along the rocks, her head spinning with vertigo, but as though he could sense her reaching for it, he spun around and grabbed her hand away.

"Do _not_ touch that," he warned, fixing her with a steely glare a moment before he turned back around, released her hand, and continued walking.

"Killian, my head is spinning. If you don't want me to _fall off the mountain_…"

He turned around halfway again, smirking this time. "If you need to grab onto something, you can always grab onto me." Emma glared. "But really, unless you're keen on being poisoned, I'd advise the latter course."

At that, she shut up. She felt herself pale but made herself keep walking. A couple of times, she slipped a bit and actually _did_ have to grab him; the first time, it was just his shoulder, but the second was more substantial and she nearly lost her footing before taking hold of the curve of his hook.

When he pulled her back, he didn't skip a beat. He tugged her into him, securing his arm around her back before he half-asked, almost casually, "Are you alright?"

She wanted to smack him. That damn _smug_ expression again. His blue gaze was fierce, just a little predatory, and gave her chills. "You could have cut through my hand."

"I _could_ have let you fall, if you want to be technical."

"What is _with_ this thing? And could you let me go?!"

He did, smirking, but he released her slowly. "Walk in front of me," he said before they started moving again. "That way I'll catch you more easily if you fall."

She practically _felt_ his stare on her behind. She glared daggers at the path in front of her because it was too narrow and treacherous to turn and direct them at him.

Fortunately, at least for Emma, they reached a point not long after in which the path widened again, turning into a full trail that cut through the rocks as the peak began to level out beneath them. The bright blue of the sky at the summit belied the peril of the journey there, but what they found was merely a large concentration of the vine he'd told her not to touch at a point just before the mountain's true summit. The path disappeared into it.

"Well? What are we looking for?"

Killian looked intently at the vines. "It must be through there," he decided. She followed his gaze a moment; when she looked back at him, he had a sword in his hand and was walking toward it.

"Killian—"

But he didn't hear her. The vines made a tearing sound when he cut them, like they were resisting the blade. It took a few moments before he cleared a path large enough to walk through. She saw them slowly ooze a dark purple fluid onto the rocky path, making a point to avoid it as she followed Killian into a scene that could only have been from a dream.

The waterfall before them was easily twenty feet high. Without a source, it seemed to emerge from the mountain itself before collecting in a small pool at their feet. Killian produced a flask from somewhere in his jacket and filled it before bringing it to his lips. Then he froze again, as though in thought. When he looked back at her, his eyes were wide.

"Emma," he said quietly.

"Killian?"

"I remember now." He stood and came over to her. "I remember everything. Emma, my brother—"

And the next thing she felt was the cool of her countertop on the side of her face.

* * *

The first thing she did at work on Monday was check her voicemail. It was six hours later in Ireland, meaning their workday was well underway and if he'd come to work that day, he'd have heard her message. Nothing. She watched for his number throughout the day, even after he would have gone home—still nothing. Tuesday morning was more of the same. On Wednesday, she hadn't even had time to put her things down yet when her phone rang, but it wasn't an international number.

"This is Detective Swan," she answered.

"Good morning, Ms. Swan, this is Mr. Gold."

_How does he have my desk number? _She thought quickly and answered faster. "Is something wrong?"

"I'd wanted to ask you the same thing," he answered, ambiguous as ever. "I've received word from our overseas office that Killian Jones has now been missing from work three days, and I was wondering if you knew something about why."

A knot of dread gripped onto her stomach. She kept it out of her voice. "I don't, and if I did, it's likely not something I'm authorised to disclose," she answered professionally. Gold made a sound of disapproval, but she continued before he could speak again. "Although, if it were my brother that had been killed, I would probably be with my family in mourning."

"Not that you have relevant experience to attest to with either."

Emma narrowly suppressed a gasp. There's no way he could have known that, unless—_Neal. _She paused, took a deep breath, and waited for him to continue.

"Ms. Swan, I don't know what my son disclosed to you or what images of my wrongdoing he may have planted in your head, but let me make one thing clear. This is not your fight."

She pictured him on the other line, fingers to his temples, staring knowingly at the receiver. Her reply was level, low, controlled. "Actually, it is. It became my fight the moment Liam's case fell under my jurisdiction. Whatever vendettas you may have against who killed him _are_ my fight. That's the law." She paused, briefly. "Do not threaten me."

Gold spoke immediately. "Well then, detective, if you're going to make this your fight, I would advise you to tread carefully." He hung up.

When she put the phone back on the receiver, Dr. Whale was standing by her desk.

"That didn't sound good."

"Irate family member," Emma answered without hesitating, leaning back in her chair. "What have you got?"

He came up to her desk, setting some of the papers he was holding in front of her before he answered. "I've been working on the autopsy since I saw you last week, mainly trying to identify the source of this poison. And that's the thing." He looked at her sideways, pointing to a section of one of his reports. "I can't find anything that matches. It doesn't match any known toxins in the system. But I'm _certain_ that whatever it is killed him. I can't explain this, but his body was already half-dead when he was attacked."

"How is that possible?" Emma picked up the file, examining the conclusions along with the possible explanations Dr. Whale had included, or rather _not_ included.

"I don't know. I'll keep working on it. But keep this, it may be useful to you. I have other copies on my computer."

She nodded, her eyes widening over the file as he walked away.

* * *

_I promised a lot of Killian this week, so, here. Almost a whole chapter of him. _

_Since I wrote this whole story over the summer, this chapter came into being before Sad!Hook basically took over the role in season four. Please tell me someone else noticed the switch. I miss his sass._

_The exposition is complete. Next chapter we rock the boat. Hard._

_See you then._


	7. The Impossible

**AN: **Ahem. Hem. Hmmmm.

Well, I made it halfway without a hitch in my posting schedule.

I'm very sorry for the delay in this chapter. A couple of y'all checked in that I was okay - I'm great, this has just been a strange few weeks. Among other developments, I have been sucked back into the world of novel editing and, in the process, happened upon an original work of my own that has been desiccating in my archives for the last five years. A few other developments have happened IRL as well. This chapter is currently unbetaed, but I'll be re-posting chapters as I hear back from my betas, **SaharaDesiderata **and **PhiraLovesLoki**. For now, though, this story will have to live with the edits I do myself.

This chapter has another kind of obscure intro, but stick with it. You guys trust me by now, I think. In the meantime, I'll be catching up with posts. And writing things. I'm writing lots of things. Stay tuned.

_Previously on _The Islander:_ After Detective Emma Swan found the body of Liam Jones in Central Park, she went to sleep that night and found herself in Neverland with Liam's brother, Killian. But Killian doesn't have his memories of the other side like Emma does – to rectify this problem, he ventured up the mountain and drank some of the spring water from the top. Now, he remembers everything. Meanwhile, Emma's problems are going from bad to worse: Graham has left the precinct, and Dr. Whale has discovered that Liam had an unknown toxin in his system when he died. And Neal has made a deal with an enemy of his father's…_

* * *

**Chapter Seven  
**_The impossible_

_Albert Spencer was a predictable man. Conniving, but predictable. And he was the type to hold a grudge; an ouster as painful as his, surely the attorney wasn't fool enough to think there wouldn't be reciprocation._

_And this was a good play, even he had to admit that. The fact the trader even knew of the existence of Dreamshade was partly his fault—he'd seen Spencer pause in passing the day that snivelling rat, Smee, had had the nerve to sell him back the handpipes that had belonged to his father, the Pied Piper._

_He sighed. Spencer, always the greedy one. He'd followed the whole ordeal: Spencer tracking down Smee in his shop, Spencer uncovering the connection between the collector and Excalibur. While Spencer bode his time, their business relationship had developed over the span of a couple of years. He'd had the communications between the two of them monitored while Liam kept an eye on Excalibur's activity, masquerading his own investigations under a false company called J. O. R. Assets. _

_And of all the many developments Mr. Gold was watching of late, this, perhaps, was the most interesting. It had been nearly a year, now, since Albert Spencer had been axed from Roger and Stern. It had been a spectacle, albeit a private one; the man was a cad, everyone knew _that_, but Cora had pressured the board that the man at least be allowed to leave quietly. And so he had. _The man is a cat_, thought Gold. _Always seems to land on his feet._ It was less than a month before he was been taken in by Voyager rival Midas like a prodigal son. And just as quickly, his _talents_, as it were, made a reappearance in the financial sector. For Midas, he was a dream come true: everything the man touched seemed to turn to gold._

_He smirked at the turn of his own wit. It was true: even after Liam's death, Spencer was never far from his line of sight. And as Liam had unearthed, it was almost uncanny just how successful Albert had been as of late. A speculative trade in emergent fuel cells had soared only days before a shadow investor had poured over $1 billion into their development, causing its stock price to skyrocket exponentially over the course of just 72 hours. A similar arrangement ahead of the merger of two large Internet providers proved similarly lucrative. And now, the sleep drug. It was supposed to be going to trial soon. They'd been watching it over the days leading up to Liam's death. The company behind it, Georgios, was keeping very quiet about it, but Gold wasn't daft. _

_In fact, it was Spencer who had become arrogant and careless. It hadn't taken much digging on either his or Liam's part to put together the pieces. The secret to Spencer's success was not Midas but William Smee, the rat's substantial portfolio providing plenty of fodder for his own investments. And yet, there was something different about this particular arrangement than was the norm for Spencer of late. The drug was supposed to be going to trial—here he read, however, that Excalibur was _withdrawing_ its investment, not continuing it. Had Smee had a change of heart? Excalibur was only involved as a shadow, and very few knew exactly who it was that was leaving Georgios in the dust at the last minute. That didn't seem quite right. No, there was something else going on, here. _

_Spencer sitting back and taking a loss when he believed he'd orchestrated a sure victory went against the man's character. He'd kill his own son if it meant getting ahead. And it had been Liam who had discovered Spencer's fraudulent behaviour—the firm held the key to stopping him._

_Was it Spencer who'd killed Liam? He'd have to look into this._

_And who better to ask than the officers involved in his case?_

* * *

This was getting weird. It took her several minutes to read through Dr. Whale's observations, then another few to read them again, stalling over every obstinate occurrence of words like _unknown_ and _tissue decay_ in the text in front of her_. _She'd remembered what he'd said before about it possibly being a spider bite, then consciously ignored his later remark that he'd checked the toxin against every match in the system and come up blank. But what if there had been something he'd missed?

_Fat chance,_ a small voice in her mind nagged at her. But she ignored that, too.

So she turned to Google. Google wouldn't contradict her. There were spiders whose toxins resulted in tissue breakdown, yes, but though the pictures she unearthed of their bites were disturbing, none of them matched the picture's sprawling, almost rootlike exudation of dark purple from a single vein. From the photos in Dr. Whale's report, she could see the skin around the mark on Liam's arm was faintly grey. It made her stomach turn. Beneath it, a sediment of maroon where his arm rested on the table marked the artificially-prolonged effects of livor mortis from the chemicals preserving his body.

That was normal. The violet scrawl that mocked her from the photograph was not, and she stared at it as though willing it to reveal itself.

After a moment, though, she sighed. There wasn't much good that would come from this, and her meagre forensic biology classes in college were too far removed to be of use, now. Even if she went to the lab, which she didn't particularly want to do again, there wasn't much she could uncover by just staring at him. Liam Jones was still stabbed, that much she _did_ know—if he was poisoned, the chance was still alive that the person who stabbed him was also the person who poisoned him. It was a long shot, but it was the best she could do.

And then, her conversation with Gold jumped back into her memory.

_Killian Jones has been missing from work for three days,_ he'd said. Was it possible _Killian_ had been poisoned, too? Why was he gone? She'd attributed it to grieving, but Gold had wanted to know if she'd had something to do with it—had whoever had done this to Liam caught on to the fact she knew about the poison?

Considering she hadn't talked about it with anyone but Whale, that was also a long shot. But most things about this case were long shots, so she wouldn't overlook it. Besides, she _did_ have one way to find out: if Killian _was_ dead, he wouldn't be in Neverland anymore.

* * *

Emma took the rest of the afternoon off. It had been several days since she'd slept well, and even if she hadn't left early, the prospect of a nap was tantalizing.

She would have the house to herself for a few hours, but still, so as not to worry Henry if she _was_ out that long, she retreated to her room. It was tempting to take a few Advil PM to help speed the process along. But in the end she didn't have to. The instant she let herself relax, she was asleep. When Killian was waiting for her—not on the mountaintop, but on the beach, where she always seemed to land when she arrived—she almost wanted to cry with relief.

"Killian, you're alive," she said, taking a few steps toward him. He nearly levelled her with a look that was trying very hard not to be exasperated.

"Thank you for that observation," he quipped. But he softened a bit as he observed with equal astuteness, "You're back."

"I needed to make sure you were alive," she repeated. She was about to finish when he spoke over her.

"Why would you have doubts about that?"

She looked at him like he'd grown a third arm.

"Killian…you've been gone from work for three days. Long enough that Mr. Gold called me at _work_ and _threatened _me."

"No, that's impossible, it's only been three days _here_—" He cut himself off as he stood, though, and thought. As he did, so did she.

"Bloody _fucking_ hell," he suddenly spat. She turned toward him. "Of _course_ that's why you're back after only three days—I never _left._"

The pieces came quickly to her, then. _Time is normal for him here, now._ A night for her was normally weeks for him, and if it had only been three days, then something had changed about the way he experienced time. But the only thing that had changed, aside from the fact he wasn't on the mountaintop anymore, was that he had his memories back. At least, that's what he said before. _But a lot of damn good _that_ does if he's knocked out on the other end._

"_How did this happen." _It came out a statement, but it was a question.

"The water. It's the only thing that's different. When I drank it, it restored my memories," he rapped his hook against the tree branch above his head, "and evidently it _trapped_ me here."

"But that's impossible—"

"No, Swan, it's _not._" _Again_ with the look that could level an army. It made her want to freeze and throw her hands up in surrender all the same. "I don't know _what_ this world is, exactly, but if the poison that killed my brother could be taken _out,_ then it's certainly possible it could shut me _in._"

Her stomach sank into her feet. _No._ But even though it was the least believable part of this whole equation, it was the only thing that made _any_ sense. Dr. Whale had said the poison he'd found on Liam didn't match any known toxins in the system, and the system catalogued every toxin known to man. If it wasn't there, chances are it didn't exist in this world, or possibly even beyond it—it wouldn't have surprised her at all to find some trace, radioactive chemicals from asteroids within the bounds of possibility, but _this?_

This was a dream world. Admitting something from a dream world could kill someone was like fearing the ghost in the bedroom closet, and yet, it wasn't as though she could explain her acquaintance with Killian any better. But what the _hell_ did Neverland have to do with Liam's murder? And what _was_ this mysterious poison, anyway?

As though he could sense her question, he came over to her, shucking as much of his anger away as he could, and stopped, his eyes boring into hers. He nodded at her hand without breaking his gaze. "When I stopped you from taking hold of the vine on the mountain, I was stopping you from meeting the same fate as my brother. I already knew that's what killed him. I've known that since before I met you."

"How is that possible?" She felt like a broken record.

Killian ran his hand through his hair, breaking their gaze only to meet it again a moment later, weaker. Resigned. She could tell he was remembering something difficult.

"The first time I came to Neverland, I was with Liam." He exhaled. "We were sent, actually. Meant to retrieve it—it was alleged to have healing properties. He never told me why."

"I'm guessing that secret died with him?"

But the only answer she received were the sounds of the evening traffic outside her window.

* * *

Killian swore when she disappeared before him. That was the problem with the dream world—when he'd first met her, he'd made it sound like she had absolute control of when she left. But it wasn't true. He knew that now. It wasn't true any more than he had control over the fact he was still here.

Whereas before, time on Neverland was a blur, the receipt of his memories seemed to reconstruct time itself, bringing back to his active memory a lifetime of subliminal understanding of how it passed. As the hours dragged on, the wait for Emma became excruciatingly long.

Without her there, it was almost all he could think about. That, Liam, and the case. Supposedly, the case's resolution would bring him peace. He knew it had been Dreamshade that killed Liam, but the time before she was here last, Emma mentioned a murder weapon having been stolen from a pawn shop. That meant the pieces were all confused. It hadn't been Liam who'd taken the plant out of Neverland to begin with, as neither he nor his brother could take anything out of the dream world. It had to have been someone else.

Unless Liam had been back without him.

At that thought, Killian paused in his tracks. What he'd told Emma was true: the first time he'd seen Neverland, he'd been with Liam, and the last time he'd seen his brother in person had been several months ago, when he'd been on leave from work around the holidays. But that was _him, _not Liam. Their last trip to Neverland together was several months ago—it was certainly possible that Liam had been back after that.

Besides, when they'd gone together, they'd left the Dreamshade behind on purpose. He had no way of knowing whether it was possible to take something out of Neverland—he'd never tried it.

Killian's eyes went wide. It wasn't true. _He'd_ never tried it, but then he remembered: Liam had. When the Dreamshade had killed him in Neverland, it was how he'd been able to revive him—the second chance the island could only ever give to one person, and it was his idiot brother who'd gotten it—

_A lot of bloody good _that _did. _A bitter laugh escaped him. As he thought again about the fact Liam was dead, he remembered his most recent exchange with him. His brother had been tracing a series of moves tailing a hedge fund called Excalibur that pointed to insider trading; Liam had sent a few files over, requesting that Killian check his math before he submitted them as evidence in the case that was already forming around this before he sent it to the investigating committee.

He hadn't even started examining them yet when Liam had died. His memory of Liam sent him back to Neverland that night. And when he'd pledged to avenge his brother's death—when he'd wished and vowed all the same for just deliverance on this evil—that's when he'd met Emma.

The thought brought a smile to his lips, which grew a bit as he remembered she'd left him a voicemail. He'd never had the chance to return it. If time in Neverland for him now mirrored time in the real world, he'd been asleep, or whatever it is he was, since the previous Friday. If—_when,_ he corrected himself—he awoke again, he'd have to return it. Something about that woman had grabbed onto him with more force than a mind reeling with loss could explain.

He wished he could see him. Liam. As he did, a small glass ball materialised by his hand. He picked it up. It had what looked like octopus tentacles wrapped around it, and it was heavier than it appeared. He looked at it intently. And then its insides changed, a cloudy, purple smoke swirling around in it, revealing a table, a body half covered with a sheet, and a man in a white robe examining his brother's left arm.

The air would have drained out of his lungs had he a need to breathe. He threw the ball away from him. Yes, it was definitely Dreamshade. He wished he could tell the man in the white robe that he could stop scratching the ground for something that didn't exist in his world.

The ball reappeared next to him. He stared at it, annoyed, until it swirled purple again. He watched as the computer monitor to the right of the examiner flickered to life. He glanced up at the change in lighting. Then, he dropped his penknife. Killian heard the small _click_ on the floor when it met the concrete.

Across the monitor, in small, neat letters, the words wrote themselves across the screen: _You can stop scratching the ground for something that doesn't exist in this world._

* * *

The day seemed to drag by once Emma was awake again. At some point, she'd gotten a call on her cell from Neal that Excalibur—_Smee,_ she corrected herself—was the shadow investor who'd pulled out of an investment he'd taken the place of, asking her to let him know if she found out the man was onto something. _He is a suspect,_ she thought, and agreed, under the condition that he not ask her to violate norms of disclosure again. The implications of what he was saying didn't occur to her immediately—the nap had numbed her brain, and without Graham there to help her anymore, she didn't have as much of an idea what she was doing with the financial side of the case. It was harder than not to keep from feeling at sea.

Instead, she poured every ounce of her remaining mental energy into fixing dinner for Henry. Mary Margaret had taught her how to make tater tots when they were living in the co-op; the monotony of shredding the potatoes, forming the mixture into balls, and rolling them in flour and breadcrumbs set her mind at ease. Still, as she felt herself slip into the "case mode" she was finding it harder and harder to stay out of, she burned the first batch, setting those aside for herself. She was halfway through preparing the second batch when there was a knock at the door.

_Henry wouldn't knock_, she thought, setting her oily tongs on a tray and making her way to the front door.

Through the peephole was not Henry, nor anyone she recognised, but a woman, probably Ruby's age, with gorgeous, wavy red hair and the expression of a lost child written all over her face. Emma's heart tugged, so she unlatched the deadbolt and opened the door.

"Hi, can I help you?"

"Are you detective Emma Swan?" she asked a little uncertainly. Emma looked at her sideways, the other eye on her gun in the credenza drawer beside her.

"Yes, who are you?"

The woman bit her lip before responding.

"My name is Ariel Fisher, and I know who killed Liam Jones."

* * *

_Pardon my drama. We're back on Monday.  
_

**_Terms:_**

_Speculative trade: a trade undertaken whose outcome could go one of a few ways, but which has been undertaken with the understanding that the likely reward more than offsets potential losses. Basically, a calculated risk. In the fuel cell example, the first investor invests in the cells right before another investor comes in and pours a bunch of money into their development, all but assuring they would go into production. A development like that would be considered fishy._


	8. The Truth

**AN:** I've gone over this chapter a few times myself, but this chapter is unbetaed. Pardon any mistakes.

* * *

**Chapter Eight  
**_The truth_

Emma nearly felt the wind get knocked out of her. She heard herself gasp before responding.

"Ariel," was all she said at first. She closed her mouth, breathed once. "I thought you were—"

"Dead?" She finished for her, stepping inside. Emma closed the door behind her, stared at it a moment, and locked the deadbolt again for good measure. "I had a feeling he'd say that. What did he tell you? Killed? Suicide?"

"Car crash," Emma answered in an exhale, not yet realising she was answering two questions at once.

"That was my next guess," Ariel added. Her confidence was returning. She paused, then, sniffing the air. "Do I smell something burning?"

Emma's eyes went wide a moment and she made her way into the kitchen, shutting the stove off without taking her eyes off Ariel.

"Thanks," she said a little awkwardly.

"No problem." The younger girl smiled, meeting Emma's eyes. "So, why I'm here."

"Can we start with how that's possible?" Emma halfway demanded. "As far as I knew until now, you and your boyfriend were killed two weeks ago in a car crash on Long Island."

Ariel laughed a bit. "You know, that's actually really good. My car was stolen about a month ago. I didn't have any idea who did it. Now I think I do." Ariel bit her thumbnail, shaking her head. "That way he could make it _look_ like I was dead."

Emma narrowed her eyes a bit. "Who is 'he?'"

Ariel snapped her attention back to Emma. "The guy who wants to kill me. Albert Spencer."

Emma stared at her a moment. Then, she ran through everything she knew.

It was less than she thought. She knew Spencer was the one who'd set Neal up last week; it was Smee, however, that Neal asked her to keep an eye on, Smee being the one, for all she knew, that was funding Spencer's illegal trade scheme. It seemed, at any rate, like the two were working together. And now, here was Ariel, who was supposed to be dead, telling her Albert Spencer wanted to kill her.

From what Neal had said, it also seemed pretty clear that Spencer wanted to cheat him. The more she thought about it, the guiltier he looked. But even then, that explanation still left a lot of pieces unaccounted for—most importantly, why Liam was dead in the first place, and what the hell Ariel had to do with it.

_So now, Ariel thinks Spencer stole her car,_ she thought. If it turned out to be true, that would be excellent—a piece of hard, irrefutable evidence that he'd broken the law, one that could be very easily used as an anchor charge if she needed to buy time to get him on something better. On the other hand, collecting that evidence would be difficult. The car had been totalled, and after it had been collected from the crash site and thoroughly examined by the forensics team, it was probably on its way to what was left of it being junked. It would probably take CCTV footage to get Spencer on that, and collecting that would take a lot of time she didn't have right now.

But then, she remembered what Gold had said. It had been Liam that had uncovered Spencer's trade scheme. As Gold had reminded her then, if either he or Smee were behind his murder, she would have her motive. _That would be a better charge._ But she also remembered the case file. The fingerprints on the knife had been Ariel's.

And then, it dawned on her. It had been a rookie mistake. She'd written Ariel off as a suspect because she was dead.

And now she wasn't. She was here, sitting across from her at the counter, and Emma's gun was in the credenza by the door.

She'd been about to grab it when Ariel had smelled something burning.

She'd left it to go turn off the stove.

Emma stood up.

"What's wrong?" Ariel asked innocently.

Emma looked at her sideways, taking a couple of steps back toward the door. "I think you know what's wrong." She watched Ariel's expression become confused. "We found your prints on the knife that killed Liam Jones."

Her hand found the drawer she kept her gun in, and she opened it, but didn't remove it. Ariel's eyes went wide.

"NO!" she shouted. She shot out of her seat. Emma removed the gun and held it facing down, ready to fire.

Ariel held her hands in front of her. She shook her head furiously. "No, it's not like that! I don't know how, but someone's trying to frame me—look, I have the knife right here!"

She dug in her purse a moment and produced a small, old-style bowie knife with a BB insignia on the handle.

"It was my great-grandfather's. He was a fisherman. He had several, just like this one. Wouldn't use anything else."

Emma was silent. She'd always been able to tell when people were lying, and Ariel wasn't. She held out her hand to accept the knife, which Ariel handed to her—but she didn't let go of her gun, either. She examined it a moment. Ariel was right: it was a dead ringer for the murder weapon, which she knew for certain to be in evidence lockup in the Forensics department. Breaking in there was out of the question.

And yet, impossible was the norm for this case. She looked at the knife again, then at Ariel, and narrowed her eyes.

"You need to explain this."

"I don't know if I can." Ariel looked down, shaking her head again, sadly this time. "I don't know if you'll be able to believe anything I say. But I didn't kill Liam. Whoever did just finished him off."

Ariel swallowed. She still didn't look up. When she spoke again, after several moments, it sounded like she was fighting tears.

"It was the Dreamshade that killed him."

Emma looked at her blankly, setting the knife on the counter. "Dreamshade."

"From Neverland," Ariel explained. Emma raised a brow. "I'm not crazy, I swear. Dreamshade is a poison. It grows in a thick, purple vine with thorns, especially around the mountain—"

"I know," Emma cut her off as her tone grew hysterical. She took a long breath, assessing how to proceed—even if Ariel knew that much about Neverland, there was still no way to be sure she had been there herself. Someone may have told her, and revealing that _she_ had been there could put them both in danger.

She decided to play the cop.

"It's okay, Ariel. How was he poisoned?"

Ariel had been looking off into the kitchen as she deliberated. When she looked back at Emma, she was openly crying. Despite the situation, the girl's tears tugged at the mother in her, and Emma found herself fighting the urge to envelop her in a hug.

"He poisoned himself." Emma's eyes went wide. "I don't know why. He was probably threatened." Ariel wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "In fact, I'm sure he was threatened. But the poison was slower than he thought it would be on this side. No one knew how fast it would work here, not even Liam. He had time to tell his brother what had happened. And once someone else knew about Dreamshade in this world, it was only a matter of time before they connected all the pieces back—"

"To Spencer?" Emma asked. "Is that who threatened him?"

When Ariel shook her head, Emma raised a brow.

"It's complicated. Spencer asked me to get the poison, but he wasn't the one…" She trailed off, her voice growing softer.

"Who did it, then? Who threatened him?"

Ariel met her eyes again. Hers were glassy. She took a breath, steeling herself. "He said his name was Graham. Graham Humbert."

* * *

Killian couldn't look away. It was like a window through worlds. It may well have _been_ just that—so, to verify, he wished he could tell the man in the white coat that he knew what the poison was.

The first message was erased, the new letters flickering across the screen a moment later. _I know what the poison is._

The man just stared at the screen, dumbfounded. This was impossible. But when the message didn't immediately erase, he collected his thoughts, questioning weakly, "How."

Killian didn't answer that. He just wished he could tell the man it was called Dreamshade.

_It's called Dreamshade. _A few seconds later, he added, _Want to check?_

After a moment, the man nodded. The screen went black, then flickered on to reveal the doctor's backdrop. Once the computer had turned on, he searched the system for 'Dreamshade,' 'Dream shade,' 'Dreamshade poison,' and every variation he could think of, coming up blank each time. As he paused for a moment, gripping his chin in deliberation, the computer shut off, and the white screen came back up.

_I told you it's not of this world._

"Who are you?" the man asked the empty lab.

Killian smirked at the ball. _I am Captain Hook._

"What, like from Peter Pan?" The doctor let out a mirthless laugh, but the cursor just flickered as though unamused.

_It comes from Neverland._

The doctor stared at the screen a moment. "That was funny the first time. It's not funny again."

_Go ahead, look. You won't find anything like it in your world._

When the doctor didn't immediately proceed toward the computer again, Killian continued.

_Wait, haven't you already tried that?_

"So you're an arrogant ghost. Wonderful. Anything else I need to know?"

Killian erased the text. The cursor flickered. It had been over a week since Liam's death in his world—in all likelihood, the doctor already knew how the poison worked, probably much better than he did.

What _would_ he need to know? As he thought about it, he couldn't think of much. While the way Dreamshade arrived in that world might be interesting, it wouldn't actually help him. But then it occurred to him: this doctor was working on Liam's body. That meant he was in Emma's precinct. The information he had wasn't of use to _him_, but it would be to Emma. He could get a message to her.

He decided to bait him.

_If I were to tell you how Dreamshade arrived to your world, would you deliver a message for me?_

"Yes," the doctor responded.

_Alright, then. Sit back._

So Killian told him. It took several messages that filled the entire screen to explain that Liam had originally been sent to retrieve the poison by request of a licensing investigator named Albert Spencer. At the time, he'd understood it to have healing properties; Spencer had a hedge fund investor who wanted to buy the rights from him.

Killian had been with him at the time. He had challenged his brother's reasoning, warned him it was probably a trick. Warned him not to get involved, that if Spencer wanted this so badly he should have been able to get it himself. But as though to prove him wrong, ease his worries, whatever, Liam had picked up a bunch of the stuff and raked it down his left arm.

"So it was a suicide? How does that explain the stabbing?"

_I was getting there._

"Bloody detective," Killian swore to himself.

It hadn't been a suicide. The first time was an accident; the second time, Liam had been threatened, along with several others if he didn't comply. When he'd used the Dreamshade on himself again, he'd known that time what it would do. Since he was going to be killed either way, he did the honourable thing.

The doctor was quick, though. "But, wait," he said once Killian finished. "If he'd used this same poison on himself when he was with you, how did he survive?"

_He didn't._

After a long moment, Killian continued. _He died the first time. It wasn't the Dreamshade that has healing properties. There is a spring, here, with the power to heal. Its waters revived him. But there is a catch._

_Normally, those who try to leave Neverland after being revived by the spring die. Unless a trade is made._

"A trade?"

Killian took a long breath before continuing. _The heart of the truest believer._ _He came to Neverland as a boy, and his heart is here. Or, was. Liam traded his own heart for the boy's in order to be able to return. _

Killian had learned what had happened when he'd drunk the water. The boy had first come to Neverland years ago, when the island was dying. It was the reason he'd been brought there—his heart could restore it, but it would be costly. He'd have to leave his heart behind in order to be able to return to his own. He couldn't stand the thought—on the other hand, nor could he stand the thought of the island where he'd had so many adventures with his friends just _dying. _So he'd made his choice. Being a child at the time, he hadn't known what it would entail.

He watched Whale shake his head. It was totally unbelievable. But its incredulity, he realised, was exactly what made it true. Neverland was the definition of the impossible. It was a dream world—it was supposed to be.

_I need you to relay this information to Emma Swan in as much detail as you can._

The doctor nodded his agreement. "Every word. Do you know who the boy is?" He asked the monitor.

_Yes. But he's not a boy anymore. _Killian bit the knuckle of his thumb, deliberating a moment before deciding to proceed. After a moment, he nodded to himself. She would need to know.

_Her partner. Graham._

* * *

_Ariel was remarkable. He didn't know how she'd done it. One moment, she was there, in front of him, asleep on his couch, that boyfriend of hers stroking her hand and looking at her like she was made of diamonds. The next, she was awake, her previously empty right hand clutched around a small vial of water so pure it almost sparkled._

_It had been a long shot, but when he'd heard of the girl with the rare ability to cross realms, he had to be sure. The fact he didn't have a heart meant he couldn't return to Neverland himself, not without help—so when he'd heard of her, he sent for her, and upon explaining his condition and the reason he needed to return to Neverland, she had only been too enthusiastic to retrieve the spring water that would allow him to go back._

_His was a malady that was otherworldly in its effects. It had been many years since he'd given the island his heart in order to help it survive. He'd only been a child when he'd done it, but it was a choice he lived with daily in the form of a diminished emotional capacity and the feeling like someone was holding his heart in their hand. For a long time, the reward of knowing he'd saved a realm was worthwhile in itself. He'd learned to live with these consequences. But then everything had changed. A man with no heart should have been literally incapable of love, especially like this, but Emma—_

_It was becoming harder to control. After many, many years of being completely fine, as though nothing were out of the ordinary, suddenly, he was dying. For a man to love like he loved Emma without a heart to contain it was a slow death, a death that only grew more painful as his love for her got stronger. _

_His lack of a heart was literally killing him. It wasn't natural for someone to survive this long without one. Initially, he'd thought he'd survived because he didn't love. But it was more than that. He was emotionless, neither happy nor unhappy, incredibly skilled at his job because he was entirely undisrupted by feelings. Until he met Emma. It had started not long after he'd arrived at the bureau: he'd quickly developed a healthy level of respect for his partner, for her quick retorts, capabilities, and her self-assured, worldly way of doing things. He'd grown fond of her. And then it all began to spiral out of control. It had to stop. It had to stop before he did something stupid, something that could get them both hurt. _

_He had to get his heart back – or he had to win hers._

_Graham looked at the vial for a moment. Around the sides were shallow, intricate marks almost like scales. The shimmering liquid inside was purported to have healing properties. _

_He removed the stop._

"_Wait, Graham," she said. "Don't drink that yet. She said there was a catch."_

_He looked at her. "Who told you that?"_

"_Ursula." She raised her hand a bit, as though to take back the vial, before she realised what she was doing. She'd already given it to him. It was too late. It was up to him, now. "When I was there, she said someone had taken your heart."_

_He felt his stomach clench. No. That couldn't be. He felt the air being squeezed out of his lungs. His heart couldn't be gone. That would ruin everything. He needed his heart. His love for Emma was growing stronger, not weaker - without it he'd be dead in a matter of weeks. _

_But then, he realised: if his heart was gone, the island should have been dead._

_And yet, Ariel had only just returned. He worked out the pieces quickly. Since Ariel was able to not only go to Neverland but to speak to Ursula and return here, that meant the island was still alive. If the island were still alive, that would mean a trade had been made. Someone had taken his heart and left their own. But _that_ meant that, in all likelihood, there was someone walking around in this world right now with his heart in their chest._

_It was simple, then. He had to get it back._

"_Did she say who took it?"_

_Ariel looked at Eric. The look of uncertainty in her eyes was unmistakable and heartwrenching. Her boyfriend nodded as he assured her it was okay: "Tell him what you know."_

_Ariel met Graham's eyes. And then she told him who took his heart._

* * *

**_Terms:_**

_Licensing investigator: there are all kinds of licenses that products, people, and businesses have to obtain in the United States - a licensing investigator is someone whose job it is to find out whether things are properly certified. Sometimes they double as lawyers and/or private detectives.  
_


	9. The Investigation

**AN:** Prepare for some mild brain scrambling at the end.

* * *

**Chapter Nine  
**_The investigation_

Emma was surprised this didn't surprise her more. But it fit. She hadn't thought he was a liar. And, she supposed, he wasn't—he of anyone knew she would be able to tell if he lied, so he did the next best thing. He just didn't tell the truth.

First it had been his feelings toward her, then the evidence he'd given to Gold. Then, leaving the bureau. It all stacked up. She'd been uneasy from the beginning, but she hadn't trusted her gut.

Not trusting her was one thing, but this?

"I'm not sure how he found me," Ariel began. She explained the story slowly, as though the very memory of it were painful. He'd come to her a few weeks ago, saying he'd been looking for her. She was scared at first—of course she was scared. It wasn't exactly common knowledge that she had the ability to cross realms, and the fact he'd been able to track her down made her uneasy. When he'd explained to her that he needed to get to Neverland, she wanted to help.

Emma didn't say anything, merely waited on Ariel to continue.

"It seemed innocent enough. I didn't have a problem doing it. But things didn't go the way I thought they would—I wasn't able to help him." She paused for breath, pushed her hair out of her face, and kept going. "I only knew of two other people that had ever been to Neverland, and only one I could actually talk to because the other, Peter Gold, has been dead for a long time."

Emma felt herself pale. She knew in her gut where this was going, but her head didn't seem to want to catch up_._ Since words were failing her, she just nodded instead with as much understanding as she could muster.

Ariel went silent. She was staring at her hands, the weight of what she had done almost palpable in the air between them. Before she realised what she was doing, Emma reached a hand out and placed it over Ariel's, meeting the younger woman's eyes in reassurance.

"Ariel, if I were to promise you that you won't get in trouble for anything you tell me, would you tell me something?"

Ariel nodded. "I'm not worried about that. I'll tell you anything."

"I think I already know the answer, but just to clarify," Emma smiled, briefly, sadly, before proceeding. "Was Liam Jones the name you gave Graham?

Ariel looked down, nodding again.

"Thank you."

And suddenly, nothing was simple anymore. It never had been, not really, not with Neverland and mystic poisons and potions in the mix, but there was one thing _had_ been simple from the get-go. Yet as Emma processed what Ariel was telling her, it occurred to her that she'd been conducting this case as though there had been a clear villain behind it all. Ariel's confession made her the closest thing to the perpetrator. Yet, both the bowie knife on the counter and the fact she hadn't lied reminded her that she _clearly_ didn't fit the bill.

That, and Emma had promised her immunity anyway, so her being the perpetrator as well would be moot at this point. While it was clear, at least as far as she could tell, that Ariel's confession had lead directly to Liam's murder, it had lead that way from a course of events not entirely under her control.

And she had to believe it. There seemed to be something Ariel wasn't telling her—she would deal with that later—_but now_, she realised, _I'm apparently trying to solve t_w_o cases instead of one._

Ariel spoke again, snapping Emma out of her reverie.

"Do you believe me, though? About Neverland?"

Emma felt her mouth drop open slightly. She closed it, quickly, before she said something she wasn't prepared to.

But before Emma could come up with an answer, the sound of the deadbolt turning open reverberated through the silent kitchen.

Ariel and Emma looked at each other. Panic had crossed the younger woman's face. "Henry," Emma said. A moment later, for clarification, she added, "my son."

The door swung open.

"What's that about Neverland?" Henry asked without looking up. Still facing the door, he kicked off his shoes.

Emma answered quickly. "Nothing, just a case joke."

"Okay, I won't ask." He looked up, noticed Ariel sitting at the bar. "Hi, who are you?"

"A friend of your mom's from work," Ariel answered, not missing a beat. "Speaking of, I should probably be heading out, at least if I want to make it in on time to that tomorrow—"

"It's only like 6:30—"

"Do you know where you're going?" Emma levelled a look at Ariel. There was an unspoken statement behind it: _we're not done, here._

Ariel shook her head, also acknowledging Emma's statement. "Not entirely. It would help if I can call if I get lost – can I get your number?"

_Good. She's cooperating._

"Of course," Emma replied. Ariel handed Emma her phone. In the message box, Emma left a statement: _Meet me at The Story Brook on Essex tomorrow at 9. In exchange for immunity we need to discuss the fact you're being hunted_

In the time it had taken Emma to type the message and jot down Ariel's number, Henry turned his attention to the stove. "Do you want to take some food with you? It looks like my mom made tater tots."

"Actually I burned those—"

"No, that's alright," Ariel smiled, gathering her purse. "I ate before I came. Thanks, though—for everything."

"Of course," Emma said after a moment, letting out a long breath. "Let me know if you need anything."

"I will," Ariel nodded, and left.

But as the matter of Ariel's re-entrance to the case was resolved—at least for the night, she could always ping Ariel's phone if she needed to—the comparatively greater problem of knowing the perpetrator had come to the forefront of Emma's plate.

She swallowed. It was more than a little disheartening to know that the man responsible for all of this had been right under her nose for the past week and a half. Worse, he'd been _feeding her evidence—_what took the cake, though, was that he was also the man who'd almost desperately taken her to dinner _twice_ now. Not only did nothing add up, it was too much.

As the weight of it loaded itself onto her, Emma felt her head start to spin.

"Mom, are you okay?" Henry's voice snapped her out of her reverie. She started a bit.

"Yeah, I'll be fine." Emma smiled weakly, knowing she wouldn't get away with this lie. So she wouldn't have to meet Henry's scrutinizing gaze, she reached over and turned the burner off, removing the pan with the last few tater tots still cooking and carefully placing them on the plate with the rest of them.

* * *

Emma didn't go on her run the next morning. When she awoke naturally just after five, feeling like she'd overslept for hours and surprised that she hadn't returned to Neverland, it was all she could do not to pace enough circles to wear a hole through the hardwood. Learning everything she had at night was almost unfair because she couldn't _do_ anything about it until the next day, which was almost an eternity and left Graham a lot of time to make a move. She'd had half a mind to call him—assuming his cell number hadn't changed—but then, if he didn't jump to conclusions about her romantic interest in him (which was _definitely_ not happening now, she thought), he'd ask questions she couldn't answer without lying. And because he'd know her lying about the case meant she suspected him, he'd just run and become even _more_ difficult to catch.

A far corner of her mind nagged at her that she didn't _really_ know any of those things would happen. For all she knew, he had no idea she was onto him. She stayed in her bed a long time, mind racing, loudly exhaling her frustration against the still-dark ceiling.

_I probably _should_ call him_, she reasoned. _It's unbelievably stupid to have the perp literally right in front of me and not run after him. _Besides, it would almost be advantageous for him to think she'd changed her mind. It had been several days since she'd seen him, a reasonable amount of time in which to think that kind of thing over. But she axed that plan as quickly as it had formed. For _that _to work, she'd have to see him in person, and she was an even worse actress than she was a liar. Still, she had to do _something._

Something turned out to be her cell phone ringing at exactly the time she heard Henry get into the shower. She checked the ID, expecting it to be Ariel, but it wasn't.

It was Neal.

"Hello?"

"Emma, I'm sorry to bother you so early, but something's happened."

"What is it? Is it about Killian?"

"No, Spencer. Albert Spencer. Emma, he's about to rake me over the coals for 350 million dollars."

* * *

Not being able to reach her was agonizing. She hadn't come back the previous night, so he hadn't had the chance to ask her if the doctor had done what he asked and passed along the information. He was pacing, remembering every detail of his conversation, trying to think of a way to reach her. Perhaps he'd spoken with the doctor after she'd left for the day—the lab hadn't had any windows, so he had no way of telling what time of day it had been when he'd spoken to him—maybe he just hadn't had the chance.

In fact, it was probable. Worse, if she'd been distracted—if she hadn't been thinking about Neverland when she fell asleep, perhaps if she were greatly worried about something—she wouldn't have returned. So it wasn't his fault; but the feeling of comfort that thought lent him abated when he realised it would take a tremendous distraction to prevent her return, which meant something had happened.

Almost beside himself, Killian worried about her, hoping nothing had happened, that she would receive his message soon. He wanted to just do it himself, damn the fact she was in America. But his body was unconscious somewhere on that side, and he only even _knew_ her in dreams.

It was exasperating. He pulled the little ball out of his pocket, staring through the clear orb. The doctor would come through. He didn't know the man, didn't even trust him, but a sense of sureness was with him that Emma would learn what she needed to know. Perhaps she already _did_ know. Perhaps _that_ was why she hadn't returned?

Blast it, it was difficult not to worry about this.

* * *

The information Neal relayed to her filled several pages in her notebook. He had the foresight to translate the jargon out for her, and once she'd sorted through the connections, two things became very obvious.

The first was that Spencer had played him. She'd had Neal forward her both the packet of information he'd received from Spencer the day he'd made the deal and the research his own team had done prior to signing, ignoring the algorithms and charts and complex presentation schema as best she could. It took a while to find, and it was only mentioned once, but the document _did_ confirm that an unnamed investor had withdrawn from the Umbrasom project just before it went to trial.

_Unknown investor?_ She thought. No, that wasn't right. She _knew_ who it was. It was on the edge of her memory. She closed her eyes, resting her chin against the steeple of her fingers. _Neal called me yesterday,_ she remembered. She replayed their brief conversation: the unknown investor the packet mentioned was Smee.

Not ten seconds after that realisation had crystallized in her memory, the bathroom door popping open sharply reminded Emma of the fact it was now after 7:00 and she still had to get the coffee that day. If Henry noticed that she hadn't gone on her run, he didn't say anything. Fifteen minutes later, she was out the door. The commute to Brooklyn, in the meantime, seemed to take hours. She meditated on the facts she'd assembled all the while, careful not to lose a single one.

At that point, all the pieces she'd collected for what was now Neal's part of the case pointed to Spencer and Smee being involved in insider trading and Liam having been killed for almost outing them. The trap they'd set for Neal appeared to be the first trick they'd pulled since their would-be discoverer's death. And _that_ apparent motive—getting back in the game, so to speak, as soon as Liam was out of the picture—seemed to take care of the last unresolved hole with this plan: her primary concern was Liam's murder, and she happened to know someone, Killian, who could tell her more about what it was Liam had been working on before he died.

Emma paused for a moment to let that train of thought settle. After a few moments, though, it began to look too good to be true. There was still Ariel's confession she needed to worry about; by linking herself to Graham, narrowly avoiding culpability by way of conspiracy to commit murder due to the fact she still didn't know _why_ Graham had threatened Liam, Ariel had opened up an entire second half of the case she hadn't even known existed. And on top of her dubious association with Graham was the duplicate knife. But if Graham _was_ the most likely suspect in the death itself, which, at this point, he was, then what did _Spencer_ have to do with the murder?

She still had no real proof Graham _was_ responsible, but she _did_ know the girl hadn't lied, even if she hadn't told the whole truth. And yet, _Ariel_, somehow, had been the one who had lead to Liam's death; and now her own life may be in danger. _Because of Spencer._

What's worse_,_ she'd named another suspect, one who was probably still at large, and one whose role in this whole conundrum still made no sense to her at all.

And yet, all the other suspects were only possibilities at this point. All she had to prove Graham's implication was Ariel's testimony. At the same time, a personal testimony was more than she had for anyone else, aside from Ariel's fingerprints. On the other hand, the second knife would confuse all of that. It may have been hers, but someone else could have used it with gloves on. Loath as she was to admit it, with regard to who killed Liam, she was back at square one.

The spiral of thoughts made her head hurt. After taking a few deep breaths to settle her thoughts, she popped a couple Advil to stop her burgeoning headache in its tracks. _First things first,_ Emma told herself. She called Neal back, telling him to schedule a meeting with his father for 2:00 that afternoon. Quick, but not so quick as to seem desperate. Gold didn't strike her as the kind of man she wanted to appear desperate to; he would probably manipulate that to his own advantage.

* * *

The office was nearly empty when she arrived. Setting Ruby's coffee on her desk, she dropped her jacket on her chair and made a beeline for the briefing room.

There was a lot of information to put together. In Graham-like fashion, she started with three circles: Spencer, Graham, and Ariel. In the middle was Liam. From there, she began to connect the dots. Last night, Ariel had told her Graham threatened Liam. She drew in two arrows accordingly. Ariel, meanwhile, was being hunted by Spencer. For the circle to be complete, all she was missing was the link between Graham and Spencer. Almost as an afterthought, she added another, smaller circle with Smee's name in between them; the original case file Graham had given her said the knife currently in evidence lockup had been stolen from Smee's shop, and Smee was also the shadow investor whose place Neal had taken in the Umbrasom trials.

Emma capped the marker and stepped back, looking carefully at what was in front of her. There were two missing pieces. The first, arguably the more pressing, was who stole the knife: it didn't make sense for Ariel or Spencer to have done it, which then left Graham. The second, then, was Graham's relation to Spencer. She wasn't immediately sure there was one, but there was a lot of information being passed around that couldn't have come from anyone else.

Her eyes went wide. _No, shit._ The case file. Graham had given a copy of the original case file to Gold. Liam _worked_ for Gold. Liam had been investigating Spencer when he was killed—which had originally put the motive to kill him in Spencer's camp, but what if that had been a setup?

What if Graham was using Spencer to take the fall for Liam's death?

She took a picture of the board with her phone, erasing it and gathering her files before storming straight back to her desk. It was no surprise, then, that when she called his would-have-been office at Interpol, the accented attendant informed her they never received a record of his transfer. _I knew it happened too fast,_ she thought as she hung up. Instead, she reached for her cell phone. His number was near the top of the list of her recent calls.

—_The number you are trying to reach has been disconnected._

"Shit."

There was no way. _There is _NO_ way he found out I'm onto him this fast. Someone must have tipped him off—_

Ariel_?_

She shook her head. She _should_ march herself straight to Regina's office and tell her about this. But Emma knew the Captain. If she knew anything, she knew Regina would mobilise a full-scale search, or worse, make Emma explain herself and _then_ mobilise a search. Regina would have to wait. Before anything else could happen, she needed to get some answers out of both Ariel and Neal.

Assuming Ariel wasn't stupid enough to bail on her, she'd be meeting her at nine. That left just over half an hour to get this thing straightened out with Neal before she had to meet her.

Her coffee burned her throat a little on the way down.

* * *

___Sorry to have thoroughly discombobulated you in the process of Emma's reasoning. _I feel like I should explain just now that the Emma of my headcanon is a master at puzzles; t_hat ___bit in the second-last section wasn't for plot, per se, more for effect. Hopefully the last section straightened it out a little, but if not, it should make sense in a chapter or two. :)__

__ As for what I was going for: i_f you've ever had to work on a complicated, multifaceted problem (which I would imagine most of you who have read this far have at some point), you probably know the "scrambled brain" feeling well. _


	10. The Cartel

**AN:** So, one of the sadder coincidences of my life: my small group at church decided to move from Saturday meetings to Sundays a few weeks ago. I love them dearly, but this fact, my lack of both cable and recording capabilities, my only friend who watches Once living 1200 miles away, and the fact both ABC and Hulu don't let me watch new episodes online until a week after they air means I am perennially one week behind the action on Once and must therefore keep mine eyes away from Tumblr lest the spoilers descend.

(There are other ways to get access sooner, I know, but I want to keep things legal, and Hulu Plus isn't worth it when Once is one of only three shows I watch. The other two are The 100 and Jane the Virgin, which The CW graciously posts online the following day. Shutting up now.)

Suffice it to say...I'm still ghosting around Tumblr, but carefully. In the meantime, I will be keeping my editing clients happy and writing the epilogue for this story. My YA book is on hold because something's gotta give.

* * *

**Chapter Ten  
**_The cartel_

"_Hey, dad," Neal began uncertainly. "I need you to check a few facts for me." His voice was heavy, exasperation with himself at even having to _make _this call just a hair away from being audible in his voice. He looked straight ahead, eyes trained hard on the windshield of the taxi currently under siege by heavy rain. Outside, the street was barely visible. _

"_What's the occasion, son?" _

_Neal heard a similar wariness in the older man's tone, equal parts protectiveness and general mistrust of everyone, even his familiars. He exhaled quietly before continuing._

"_It's about an investment the firm is making." He paused, assessing his father's likely response. "There's a sleep drug that was supposed to go to trial, until one of the key investors backed out at the last minute. We're taking his place, but I just can't shake the feeling that something is wrong with this. I was wondering if Voyager could look into it."_

That had been over a week ago. His son had told him the details of the trade, who he'd made the deal with, everything he knew. He'd burned with anger. It had only been decades of practice that enabled him to respond in the manner of an impartial investigator.

His son knew almost nothing of the inner workings of Voyager. He wasn't allowed to, and even if he were allowed it would have been imprudent to give anything away. Gold reminded himself of that fact as a bulwark against the indignation that was bubbling up as to how he could have been so _stupid_ as to get involved in a trade of this magnitude with _Albert Spencer._ The shadow investor was almost certainly Smee, in that case. He wasn't sure, at first—and with Liam's death so recent, he was still the only one in the firm who knew the details of their former COO's recent undertakings—but confirming _that _detail had been easy enough with the help of Detective Swan's now-defunct partner, and he'd relayed the fact to his son soon after.

The question wasn't that Ms. Swan hadn't read the file. She was a responsible and honest detective—she practically _glowed_ with integrity_._ Rather, it was that she didn't know what to look for. He'd been certain of it as soon as he'd read the detail about the knife: the knife, stolen from Smee's shop, was a code. Many things in the rat's shop were codes. The disappearance and subsequent crash of Ariel's car was no accident, either. The vehicle was destroyed, the knife, of which she had several copies, probably taken to the collector's shop for safekeeping. _Ariel is the vehicle,_ he'd reasoned. Somehow—_it doesn't really matter how,_ he figured—Spencer had gotten Ariel to bring the stuff back for him. Liam, he knew, wouldn't have done it.

The incident had been nearly a year ago. One day, barely a week before he was fired, Spencer had called Liam into his office, having been made aware by one Ariel Fisher that his data engineer had been to Neverland. Spencer asked him to bring back Dreamshade. But Liam reported everything back to him both before and after the escapade with his brother. The accounts were different: The first time, having not known yet that Gold knew about Neverland, he'd explained that Spencer was attempting to sell the rights to an untested sleep drug. It was being developed in the States, he'd explained, which technically made it Cora's domain, but that didn't mean they couldn't investigate. They'd pursued it a bit, with little success.

The second time, which occurred after his return from Neverland, was entirely different. Having been revived by the island spring, Liam had learned its secrets, learning also that his employer was not only familiar with Neverland but was none other than the son of the Pied Piper. He could trust him. He'd told him everything—that the drug, Umbrasom, was not a sleep drug, but was in fact a distilled version of Dreamshade. It was absolutely lethal. It couldn't be allowed to go to trial—if it ever did, it would prove fatal to test subjects. They had to stop it before it started.

He'd known as soon as Neal had mentioned the drug's name exactly what it was—_Umbrasom, _of all things, as though they weren't even _trying _to hide the fact it was Dreamshade—Ariel had retrieved it for him. After Liam's death, the car crash was a ruse, meant to eliminate the only other loose end that could connect Spencer back to the fatal drug. And now, Neal's involvement was personal. When the drug proved fatal to test subjects, Neal's firm would be implicated.

It was difficult to construe those facts as anything other than what they were. Spencer knew Neal was his son; he'd have known that Gold would raise all hell to protect him. His son was probably the only person he'd do that for. It was absolutely deliberate.

And yet, even as the facts became clear, he'd had to step back. Spencer's role was apparent; Smee's was not. The two had colluded in the past, but there was yet evidence to collect that he had done so in this case.

For that, he could thank Mr. Humbert. And if Ms. Swan was able to put these last pieces together, perhaps he could thank her, too.

* * *

There was still so much to figure out. For every piece she uncovered, dozens of new connections and conditions seemed to surround it. There was the murder itself, a nebulous event with a supernatural side she didn't pretend to understand; there was Neal's case, Spencer's deception, and the seeming motive to kill Liam wound up somehow between the trader and Smee. Then, there was Ariel. Ariel was connected to both, responsible for the death of one, threatened by the other. Ariel had implicated Graham. And as she tried to fit the pieces together, the fact they wouldn't fit yet made it clear to her there was still much more she needed to learn. It was a hopeless feeling, on one hand, but on the other it comforted her with the knowledge that it wasn't her own failing that was keeping her from resolving this puzzle.

Emma pulled out her phone. It was after 8:40; if she was lucky, she would make the 8:45 train. Neal answered on the second ring, but she didn't wait for him to speak. "Neal, it's Emma. I need you to tell me in as much detail as you can remember how you found out who the shadow investor was."

He paused a moment. "I thought we were going to talk about that this afternoon?"

"We are, but something's come up." She held her phone against her ear as she walked, adjusting her bag further up her shoulder as she walked.

"Do we need to reschedule, then?"

"No, I'll still be there. Look, Neal, I just need you to—"

He cut her off. "I just figured you already knew, is all."

"How in the world would I already know, Neal?"

"It was your partner that told me. I figured he'd told you before he told anyone else."

Emma stopped in her tracks, nearly being hit by a throng of bypassers as she did so.

"My _partner_ told you?" she bit out, all thoughts suddenly blank.

Neal didn't speak for a moment. In the silence, it dawned on her: Neal didn't know he'd left the bureau. He had no reason to. Killian did, and Gold did, but if her hunch was correct and Graham _was_ using Spencer to take the fall for Liam's death, Gold had no real incentive to tell Neal Emma's partner had left. In fact, it would be better if he didn't. That way, he could keep an eye on his son while simultaneously letting him make a bad deal that would out Spencer and Smee for insider trading. Then, with the information he received from Graham's file, he would have all the pieces in his hand—

Neal was talking again, and she'd missed the last half of what he'd said. As she stepped back into the stream approaching the subway tunnel, she covered the mouthpiece of her phone, willing herself to remember everything he was saying.

* * *

Emma was _fuming_ when she got back to her desk. The meeting with Ariel had been a disaster. Before, she'd had a hunch the girl was hiding something, but now she was _sure_. Even better, she'd promised her immunity. Whatever she knew, whatever she wasn't saying—whether it was worth the value of what she'd learned, she wasn't sure.

_I_ _could_ _technically rescind it_, Emma thought. But there was no reason to. Spencer was hunting her because she knew about Dreamshade. Not only that, she was the reason Dreamshade was even _in _this world. She brought the stuff back for Spencer, yes, but she hadn't actually _done _anything illegal.

But because her knowledge was a potential danger to him, Spencer had stolen her car and crashed it to make her death look like an accident, probably because he meant to kill her with Dreamshade instead. And that was the problem: she was a complete _moron,_ but she hadn't broken the law.

Noticing there was someone standing at her desk, though, Emma cut her brooding short as she made her way through the cubicles. The expression on Dr. Whale's face told her she'd made the right decision. She quickly shrugged on her composure, stopping a few feet short.

"Hey, any news about the poison?"

"About that. Emma, I need to talk to you. Somewhere without listeners."

"Briefing room," she said, and began to lead the way. He followed, closing the door behind them while Emma set her things on the table. "Yeah?"

"Emma, the poison. I know this is going to sound crazy, but the reason there's nothing like it in the database is because it isn't found on Earth."

"You know it's from Neverland, then?" She asked conversationally.

She wasn't looking directly at him, but from the corner of her eye she could tell that if Whale had been drinking anything, he would have spat it.

_It makes sense to tell him_, she thought. If Whale knew the poison wasn't from Earth, he probably knew about Neverland. She didn't know how, but she did know that if she was crazy, he was, too, and so was Ariel, and he had information she needed and looking crazy was a chance she was willing to take.

"I've been there," she stated simply when the doctor didn't reply.

After a few moments, he did.

"So it's true," he stated simply. "Captain Hook wasn't lying, the place really does exist."

"Captain Hook?" A hand on her hip, she rolled her eyes, smirking a little. "Is that really what he called himself?"

"You know him?"

"In a manner of speaking." She registered in her mind that once this was over, she was _definitely_ not going to let Killian forget that. After a moment, though, she looked away, the hand on her hip floating up to her hair in her nervous gesture of choice as she contemplated how to explain this.

"I've been to Neverland a few times, only in dreams. His real name is Killian Jones. And yes, before you ask, he _is_ Liam's brother, and he _does _exist."

"I know, he told me himself. And now I have other questions, but before I forget—"

Emma had been thinking while he spoke, piecing together the facts as quickly as she could, identifying the holes. She interrupted him.

"How do _you _know Killian—?"

The doctor narrowed his eyes a bit, interrupting her back. "I'll get to that. But Emma, the poison—he explained to me how it came here, told me I needed to tell you. Maybe it will fill some holes in your case."

And with that, Emma stopped talking. She set her jaw, took a deep breath, and reached for her notebook, nodding for him to tell her what he knew.

Much of it was old information to her. Dreamshade was a poison found in Neverland—a thick, purplish vine, she described as the doctor related what he'd learned. _One that almost killed _me, she thought. Liam and Killian had originally gone there together. They were supposed to retrieve it—the understanding had been that it had healing properties.

But at that point, Emma's knowledge petered out. Emma had woken up before Killian could tell her why they'd gone to retrieve the Dreamshade, or what had happened afterward. There was so much she needed to know, and she was wasting time trying to predict what he would say.

_Focus, Emma._

As Dr. Whale continued to explain, she wrote everything down as quickly as she could. He told her everything he knew—how Killian had doubted Dreamshade's healing properties, what Liam had done to prove him wrong, how he was able to return. When he got to the bit about the heart, though, she felt sick. If Graham had given up his heart to stop Neverland from dying, and Liam had taken it in order to return, had Graham killed him to get it back?

Was that even possible?

Her head swam. All of a sudden, the room was not anchored to the second floor of the precinct building—it was awash at sea, and she was holding onto her files as though to a life raft. She had to talk to Ariel. Ariel had said Graham couldn't return to Neverland without his heart—had he been trying to get it back in order to return? Was _that_ what this twisted mess was about?

With a tremendous deal of effort, Emma hauled herself back to the present. Whale was answering her question, telling her how Killian had contacted him—it wasn't any crazier than how he'd contacted her, so she believed him. She had to. In this whole unbelievable mess, anything that made sense had to be wrong.

But there was one thought that gave her comfort. Absent all the paranormal, mystifying connections in the most unbelievable criminal case she'd ever investigated, the thought that Graham didn't have a heart meant he couldn't possibly be in love with her.

As though a great weight had been removed from her back, she felt lighter, stood up straighter, and for the first time in several minutes, met Dr. Whale's eyes.

"Thank you for telling me this," she said, waiting a moment after he finished speaking.

Dr. Whale nodded. "I told him I would. I have to ask, though, what's it like?"

"Dreamshade?" She asked. He shook his head.

"No, Neverland. You said you've been there a few times in your dreams—how does it work?"

"You just wish things," she stated simply. But the look that washed over the doctor's features suggested it was much more than that, as though it explained everything he needed to know. "You wish it, and it happens. Maybe you'll see for yourself."

* * *

Emma returned to her desk feeling decidedly more settled. This was excellent—Graham wanting to get his heart back was a motive. Almost as soon as she'd had that realisation, though, her own heart sank. Apart from getting a CT scan and finding that Graham's blood was magically propelling itself around his body, there was no way to prove that he didn't have a heart.

She thought back to the beginning of the case. It had been Ariel's prints on the knife, not Graham's—the knife, which may not have been Ariel's after all, that had been stolen from Smee's shop.

She let out a bitter laugh. The original theory—the knife being looted from the crash site—had been Graham's idea. She'd challenged it then, and she laughed at the thought that this was one of his sloppier cover-ups. If it _had_ been Ariel's, if it _had_ been looted from the crash site, and if _he'd_ known that, then he'd been the one who'd taken it. Then, of course, there was the small problem of the fact the knife had been stolen from Smee's pawn shop. That detail was what had placed the case in her jurisdiction in the first place, and it didn't make sense for Graham to loot it from the site, bring it to Smee, then steal it again.

The only alternative, though, was Ariel. The knife wasn't hers, but it _had_ been Ariel's prints on it. According to the case file, it had belonged to her great-grandfather, Bill Blackbeard. But _that_ had been Graham's idea too—a detail to confirm it as hers, maybe?—and he was the one who wrote the case file.

And suddenly, it clicked. If _he'd_ written the case file, there was no way of knowing how much of it was completely made up.

She stared at the file as though it were the photo of an ex-boyfriend. She narrowed her eyes, exhaled, and threw it in the shredder.

* * *

_Goodness gracious, have I been out of it lately. I don't know about you, but the change in seasons has thrown me for a loop this year. _

_I realised this morning that I haven't actually finished writing the epilogue to this story. This draft has been otherwise complete since January, and I put off the epilogue on the pretense of having lots of time to write it...ha. Ha ha. Real life laughs in my face. I promise I will have it done by the scheduled date (April 13th)._

_Another thing: we're almost to the end of the brain scrambling. There's a little bit more in the next chapter, but the worst of it is now over. Also, I have to confess...chapter eleven is my favourite chapter in the story. _

**_Terms:_**

_COO: Chief Operations Officer. The guy in charge of the internal operations of an organisation. More of a strategist than a tactician (think general vs. diplomat). _


	11. The Chase

**AN: **Have I mentioned this is my favourite chapter? This is my favourite chapter. Carry on.

* * *

**Chapter Eleven  
**_The chase_

Gold's attendant, a pretty Australian, was the one who greeted her in the lobby. She introduced herself as Belle.

"Neal's already upstairs, they're waiting for you," she informed.

"Thanks," Emma replied a bit curtly.

She didn't have to knock. Neal opened the door, returning quickly to his seat as Emma took the other chair. The lawyer didn't waste any time.

"Detective Swan, I believe I informed you last time you were here that Liam Jones had been working on uncovering the source of an unusually perfect set of market predictions, am I correct?"

"Yes, did you find it?"

"As a matter of fact, I did. Fine work on the part of the Captain, I must admit."

Emma balked. "_Regina_ is involved in this?"

But he overlooked the response question with an almost callous wave of his hand, resting the offending digits on his chin and turning, instead, to Neal.

A moment's pause followed before he spoke again. "Well, son? What do you have to say about this?"

"You can cut the I-told-you-so shit, dad, I've already explained this to both of you. But fine: my firm made an _'angel investment,' _if you will," Neal practically spat the words, "in the sleep drug Umbrasom after a shadow entity, later revealed to be _Excalibur,_ pulled out at the last minute. The drug had been about to go to trial; our investment was supposed to make sure it stayed on track."

"But he tricked you." Gold's question came out a statement.

Neal sighed. Emma filled in.

"And you have a feeling they cheated, but don't have the evidence to prove it in your case," she offered.

Gold looked at her with the same unreadable look he'd given Neal. "Now, Miss Swan, you wouldn't be here if you believed that, would you?"

Emma didn't have time to respond—Gold stood up and walked down the hall of his suite, disappearing from view when he rounded the corner. While he was gone, Emma ran over the facts for what felt like the thousandth time that day. Her current theory, that Graham had essentially deposited Spencer's fraud scheme with Smee in her lap as a cover-up for killing Liam, was heavily based on her uncovering that there _was_ a fraud scheme to begin with.

But as much as she didn't want to admit it, the conclusive facts just weren't there. Yes, it _was_ Excalibur that pulled out of Umbrasom at the last minute; yes, it _was_ Spencer that baited Liam into investing in the drug in his place. Yes, the two _had_ colluded together, sometimes illegally, for years. But while all of that was extremely suspect, it still couldn't _conclusively _tell her that's what had happened. She had no evidence _relevant to the case at hand_ that Spencer and Smee had colluded unfairly. In fact, if she was being honest with herself, the evidence pointed the other direction. It seemed there was trouble in paradise.

When Gold returned, one hand was on his cane, the other around a file that looked remarkably like the copy of the case file Graham had left with him.

"I've taken the liberty, detective, of adding in a few pieces of information we've extracted from Liam's computer, in addition to some findings provided by my son." He passed the file to Emma, who was momentarily stumped.

When she responded, she couldn't quite keep the hostility out of her voice.

"What's this about? I thought you were suspicious of my having something to do with Killian Jones being unconscious."

He smiled a bit in that way of his. "That was my mistake. My son later informed me that you two met that morning, which would have put you on the wrong continent. Consider this my apology."

Emma made a sound of acknowledgement, then began to skim through the packet quickly, hiding her deliberations behind a downturned face.

She had been careful until this point not to reveal anything about Graham's implication in the case to anyone. The more she read, though, it was clear Gold already knew. Not only that—he appeared to know more than _she_ did. That thought made her stomach turn unpleasantly, and Emma found herself fighting back the thought she'd been played. For a moment, a powerful feeling of hopelessness threatened to knock her feet out from under her. There was no way of knowing who was on what side anymore—it was better not to trust anyone, not even Neal.

It had been Graham, though, not her, who had given the file to Gold in the first place. If Gold had the file, that meant one of two situations were possible: either he was colluding with Graham, or he'd just outsmarted him.

And yet, as she continued reading, she couldn't hold back a smirk. The file was full of bogus evidence, and the fact she'd shredded her copy meant she couldn't hold it against her former partner. But now she could. Not only was Gold _not _working with Graham, he'd just saved _her_ back as well—and the more she read, the surer she became not only that Gold had bested him, but also that Graham had been right. There _was_ a cartel.

_But they aren't the bad guy._

When she reached the end of the addendum, she looked at Gold, who returned to the subject of Neal's trade when he spoke again.

"Unfortunately, Miss Swan, he never broke any laws. The things you're reading are lucky finds on Smee's part, but they're not swindles. Spencer, on the other hand, has facilitated human testing for a known poison. If I could I'd take him to court myself."

The expression that broke out on one side of his mouth, then, was not a smile, but something more sinister. He handed her another file, much slimmer than the first. "I would recommend you read this when you're alone, detective. Consider it my favour in return for the case file."

_Of course, _Emma thought, reading through the smaller file Gold had given her on her way back from the meeting. It all made sense. The whole scheme was very deliberately planned. Spencer had no way of knowing it was _him_ who was being set up, so he'd killed Liam. At least, that was how the story went. And if that was how the story went, that would mean that in order to invoke Spencer's wrath, Ariel would have had to tell Liam about Graham's plan to corner him through Spencer; seeing no way out of it, then, Spencer's people would have crashed the car they'd stolen from Ariel, killed Liam, and threatened the girl who was supposed to be dead.

At least, that was the conclusion she was _supposed_ to reach.

But then things had changed. She'd gone to Neverland; she'd met Killian and Ariel. She'd had suspicions she couldn't shake, picked up pieces she wasn't supposed to find. Perhaps he'd underestimated her.

And like a great zipper suddenly being pulled up, all the pieces fit together.

The file Gold had given her was short. In fact, it was clever what he'd done: immediately inside the cover was a single, handwritten line on a piece of printer paper. The rest was blank, but from any other angle, it looked legitimate.

It read, simply: _I know about Neverland._

Emma closed the cover of the file, replaying their conversation in her mind. They hadn't mentioned anything or any_one_ that could have alluded to Neverland's existence, and that was enough to convince her that Neal probably didn't know. _Of course Gold had to step in,_ she thought. His son had been in _way_ over his head.

Against her better judgment, Emma began laughing quietly to herself as she walked back into her office, shaking her head once again at the thought that this had been happening almost literally under her nose for the past several weeks. There was still a lot to verify, namely about Liam's actual death. Ariel had said it was suicide, and she hadn't been lying when she'd said she knew who had threatened him; she also hadn't been lying when she said she herself was not the one who stabbed him, even though her prints were on the knife.

There was, of course, a way to say all of that metaphorically and still have it be true. If she thought of it that way, then Graham _was_ the one who had killed Liam—Liam had _literally_ been the one to use the Dreamshade on himself, and Ariel may well have _literally_ been the one who stabbed him in the heart, but it was Graham who had left Liam no choice, and Ariel, perhaps, who had sought to right the wrong she had played too big a role in orchestrating. Perhaps it was her view of justice.

She stopped herself. No. That's exactly what Graham would want her to think. Ariel hadn't creatively lied to her; she'd hidden things, yes, but the duplicate knife had all but eradicated any doubt her character may have left open. And she was protective. _That _she was sure of. She hadn't hidden anything to cover her own tracks—if she had, Emma would have seen right through her. No. Someone else had stabbed Liam. She was trying to protect them.

All of a sudden, Emma slammed the file on her desk, grabbing a handful of her forehead and shaking her head. She knew it was childish to think so, but this wasn't _fair_—thanks to Gold and Ariel, everything was _so fucking close_ to being connected, but she still didn't have the most important answer of all. After _everything_ she'd learned, _everything_ she'd collected, and _all_ the evidence she had to substantiate it, she still didn't know who the _hell _had stabbed Liam in Central Park.

It made her want to scream. She looked up, thankful the office was still nearly empty. She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, staring at the clasped hands between them. She breathed slowly, in and out, then again, then a few more times, then stood, smoothed her hair, and walked out of the office.

It was time to get an arrest warrant for Graham Humbert.

* * *

A somewhat sad smile came to Graham's features as he reclined in his chair as far as its straight back would allow. He'd cut his phone—the one Emma had the number for, anyway—and his apartment was still there, but if she went there she wouldn't find anything useful. The vial of water Ariel had brought back over a month ago was stashed innocuously in his backpack. Nobody around him knew any better—he could even pull it out if he wanted. There was absolutely no reason to believe anything was amiss.

That fact had worked in his favour on multiple occasions. His absent heart, for instance—he could talk about it freely, and people would think he was waxing poetic about a lost love if he kept it short enough. The otherworldly poison was easy enough, too—absinthe came to mind, or perhaps something stronger, depending on the audience. The woman who would cross realms to help him? Just an old friend.

The fact Liam was already dead had changed everything. It was supposed to have been him—_he_ was supposed to plunge his hand through his chest and take it back, and then it would be over. But he'd killed _himself_. He'd killed himself with _Dreamshade,_ no less! The water could still possibly save his heart, so he'd accompanied officer Glass when he was called out to check on the body—making sure, as soon as he saw Emma on a collision course toward them, that she never saw his face—but no. It was unsalvageable. He'd planned on taking it just in case. It was an unexpected hitch to find that someone had beaten him to it.

Whoever was responsible for this, they _knew._

He hadn't had time to investigate. He and Glass had initially split up to search for the body; he'd found it first, the knife still buried in the chest cavity as though whoever had put it there didn't care who found it. Graham had taken a good look at it, then buried it not far from where he'd found the body. The knife was Ariel's.

It was then that he connected her to Dreamshade's presence in this world. No one else could have done it. Who she'd have gotten it for, he wasn't sure, but that was easy enough to find out. Glass was off in some other direction, so he brought Liam over to the pathway where he knew the other officer wouldn't miss him.

Finding Ariel was an immediate priority, then. When this was over, he needed to go have a conversation with Smee. In the meantime, to make sure the case didn't accidentally get assigned to anyone else, he'd fabricated the bit about the knife being stolen from Smee's shop. Later on, having Emma take the part of the case pertaining to the stolen knife that didn't exist ensured _he_ would have enough time to do what he needed to do.

Once Smee knew who he was, it hadn't taken Graham long at all to convince him that pulling out of the Dreamshade trial was in his best interest. How Spencer had neglected to tell him the drug was fatal, he'd had _no _idea. He told Smee as much—all he'd asked in return was that Smee tell him how Spencer had gotten Dreamshade to begin with, if only just to confirm his suspicions. And that, Smee had said, was simple. Ariel got it for him. And after that, since she knew Spencer knew the drug was poisonous, she would have to be killed. _Check and check._

They continued to talk after that, and Graham picked up a lot of helpful information in the meantime that would make his next moves much easier. He already knew that Spencer had been fired the previous year, also that Liam was the one investigating him—all of that was what had been what made Spencer such an easy target in the first place. Covering his own tracks would be a breeze. Men like Liam made a lot of powerful enemies; setting Spencer up to take the fall for his death was a little bit tedious, but on the other hand, it was complicated enough to throw Emma off his tracks, at least for long enough for him to get away.

Of course, there remained an annoying loophole in the mystery wherein Ariel was supposed to be dead. Originally, he figured having Emma believe her dead would keep her from finding Neverland: she wouldn't go looking for Ariel, so she'd never find a way to get there. The fact _Ariel_ had tracked _Emma_ down felt a bit like the universe was penalizing his poor forethought. And Emma was clever. Having met Ariel, she would connect this to him, eventually.

He hated that it had come to this. _At least she hasn't been to Neverland, _he thought bitterly as he stared out the window. Liam's death had changed things, and that was the only thing he regretted. Once Emma knew what he'd done, it would be too late. His last window would be closed; he'd have missed his chance. And he knew he would miss it, even though the stubborn remittances of hope he still felt wanted him to believe she could love him.

If things were different, perhaps it would have saved him. He didn't have to be a master huntsman to be able to track down the man responsible for ruining his last hope. The knives may have been Ariel's, but the motive to kill him? No. It had to have been someone who knew. There was still time to make this right.

Besides—now that the water was away from Neverland, it was lethal. Whoever took it would die. _Getting_ there was another matter. And as the 'fasten seatbelt' sign came on above him, he turned his attention forward, waiting for the inevitable announcement on the intercom.

"_Ladies and gentlemen, we are now beginning our descent into Dublin airport. Please make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright positions, that your seat belt is securely fastened…"_

* * *

He'd been sitting here for what felt like hours. Perhaps it really _had_ been hours—since drinking the water, he felt time here like he did in the real world. But he'd also been stuck here since then, his only lines of communication with the other side apart from Emma being a few lines of text exchanged with a forensic doctor in her lab.

Killian thought back to how that had even happened. He'd wished he could see Liam; that's when the ball had come to him, the little crystal thing that had allowed him to communicate, if only briefly. He'd seen the doctor when he'd seen Liam, and it had gone on from there. Killian picked up the ball and eyed it suspiciously. More than likely, if he wished to see Emma, it would show him where she was.

Maybe there was a way he could communicate with her, too, like he'd communicated with the doctor. So he gave it a shot—he wished he could see Emma. The thing swirled purple again, showing him images of her walking determinedly through the offices, clearly on her way somewhere. No. He wouldn't try that now. This was probably important. He looked at it a moment more before the image faded away, and he stashed the thing in his coat pocket, standing as though to make his way somewhere himself.

There was nowhere for him to go, though. Even if he drank all the water in the spring, it wouldn't tell him any more than he already knew. And he knew enough. He knew everything that had happened; by the look on Emma's face, perhaps she did, too.

But the next thing he knew, it wasn't Neverland's dense foliage, solitary mountain, or endless blue sky that he was staring at, but the white of his ceiling. Someone was pouring something into his mouth. He knew that taste. It was the spring water. He was awake, someone was giving him the spring water—

"That should take care of you within a few days," he heard a voice say from nearby. He shot up. The hand that had administered the liquid was connected to a man, probably about his age, probably from Belfast, if his accent was any indication—

"What the hell have you done to me." The question came out a statement. "I wasn't finished yet, there was still someone I needed to reach—"

"Actually you're quite finished," he replied, not looking at him, smirking a bit at the insinuation he'd let slip inadvertently. "I'm not sure what you were doing in Neverland, but I'd say you have about five or six days before that takes care of things." He held up the vial that had held the water in indication. "You had it coming, you know. That was clever, killing Liam before the Dreamshade could finish him off. I'm assuming he didn't tell you about our deal."

As he finished, Graham turned to face Killian, his eyes showing not a scrap of any emotion out of the ordinary. Against his will, Killian felt his stomach tighten.

Graham's smirk grew a bit. "He was just taking my advice, of course. I told him I would use this on myself if he didn't; I would die, but since he had my heart, so would he, and since my heart was linked to Neverland, so would it. And then you would die, and Ariel, and Gold, and everyone who had ever been there. So it was him, or all of us. But you didn't know that, did you? You killed him before he could be honourable. So I've just made things right."

_Emma,_ he thought. He must have thought it with his mouth, though, because the next thing he knew, the man who'd killed him stood, the veil on his threats lifting as he spoke again.

"What was that?"

Killian rose as well, a bit pleased to note they were the same height. He didn't miss a beat.

"Your partner." He disguised none of the gravity of the implication in those two words. "The one you may well have killed, if my brother didn't cooperate."

"I take it she's been to you," he responded. The arrogance was gone, the weight of the piece he'd missed heavy in the air. He looked away a moment, then back. "That doesn't matter, now. He's dead. You will be. And I will be, for that matter, without my heart. But I'll be damned if I don't take as many of you down with me as I can."

Killian smirked. "So you'll be damned in either case, then."

"I'm glad we're in agreement."

And then, Killian removed the silicone skin he wore over his prosthetic left hand, punched Graham in the temple with the unmasked metal alloy hard enough to knock him out, and reached for his cell phone. He had to call Emma.


	12. The Precipice

**AN: **This is it, guys. Last chapter. Thanks for sticking with me. Remember: scenes in italics are flashbacks.

* * *

**Chapter Twelve  
**_The precipice_

Ruby had asked to come with her. She was torn between telling the junior detective no and going alone and alerting half the precinct and bringing a SWAT team. She didn't know whether she wanted to kill him or raise absolute hell for what he'd done; Ruby was a compromise, she thought, barely containing her grin at the thought of the semiautomatic slung over her younger friend's hip.

They took her squad car, tearing through the streets like they owned them as taxis and citigoers parted like the Red Sea. There was no elevator. The sound of their boots on the echoing steps was satisfying.

"NYPD," Emma demanded as she pounded on the door. For a long thirty seconds, there was no response. She looked down, steadying herself as best she could.

She knocked again, louder this time.

"Graham Humbert, I have a search warrant. You have fifteen seconds to open the door before I'm forced to break it down."

Still nothing. Emma braced herself and pressed her ear to it—silence.

"You want to do the honours?" She asked Ruby. Her friend grinned, almost malevolently.

The door actually came off its top hinge.

"Nice work."

And then they set to it. While Ruby searched the kitchen, Emma took the living room. She eyed every surface she could see, taking pictures with her mind and searching for anything out of the ordinary. When she couldn't find anything right away, she began pulling every book off the bookcase that took up the entire back wall, running her hands along the seams, turning over chairs and tables—nothing.

She stopped to breathe. She was so angry that the urge to throw his furniture out the window was almost overwhelming. But that wouldn't help anything. She had to focus, be present, find anything at all that could help her.

"Living room's clean," she announced after several minutes, slightly out of breath. "I'll go check the back rooms."

"Meet you there."

The laundry room was easy, so she checked that first. Clean. There was nothing in the office, either. His computer was right where he'd left it; the lack of dust showed it had been moved, so she went over to it and opened the back. He'd removed not only the hard drive, but every memory-storing chip or disk the thing contained, just for good measure. She proceeded to his files—empty.

So was the shredder. He'd probably burned everything he didn't need and taken everything else with him.

"Heading into the bathrooms," Ruby announced.

All that was left was his bedroom. She took a deep breath before walking in. The fact his clothes were mostly still there was messing with her. And the smell…_he was my partner,_ Emma thought. Even before the weird romantic thing between them had happened, they were not only partners, they'd been friends.

Which was when she saw it.

It was the most cliché thing in the world—a picture they'd taken on a training lunch not long after he'd joined the bureau. It was one of those swanky midtown bistros; the director's idea, as he had been the one to suggest it, trying as hard as he could to conceal the fact it was a thank-you to Graham for leaving Interpol in favour of them. Regina had taken it. His hand was on her shoulder. They could have been anyone, at that moment; detectives, friends, colleagues, lovers.

Emma glanced to the door, making sure Ruby wasn't in her line of view. She looked at it a moment. A swirl of emotions ran through her. All of a sudden, it felt hot to the touch; her eyes narrowed, as though it had had the gall to burn her. She threw it against the wall. The corner left an indent where it hit, the glass shattering onto the hardwood floor that ran through his whole apartment.

Ruby appeared in the door, looking at Emma a moment.

"Everything alright in here?"

Emma turned to her.

"Yeah, it's nothing. I'll explain later."

But as Emma turned again to walk out of the room, her phone rang. She looked down at the number—it was an international number. That meant it was someone calling her office line, which she'd routed to her phone.

She didn't think through it any further, though, just answered. Technically she wasn't supposed to, but the apartment was clean and deserted, and the only other person there was Ruby. It didn't matter.

"This is detective Swan."

"Hello, Emma?" Accented. A little bit gravelly. Urgent. She knew that voice. She felt her blood run cold. _This is impossible._

But he didn't wait for her to answer.

"Emma, this is Killian," he said. He sounded like he was out of breath—as though he were moving somewhere, quickly. "I'm at the airport in Dublin, so I don't have long, but I'm on my way to JFK. I need you to meet me there in seven hours. Something's happened. Can you do that?"

Her mind raced. She nodded before realising he couldn't see that. "Yes, of course," she said after a moment. And then, he gave her his flight number, and hung up.

* * *

Emma and Ruby had nearly reached the station when her phone rang again. Ruby was driving, so she pulled it out, staring dumbly at the screen for a moment before she answered.

"Hi, Captain," she answered.

Ruby looked at her a moment, concern flashing across her face, but she didn't say anything.

"Detective Swan, I need to speak with you. I understand the Liam Jones case has gotten a bit bigger than you thought it would—that you obtained a search warrant today for Graham's apartment." She paused, collecting her thoughts. "Come to my office as soon as you can. Evidently there is a lot we need to discuss."

Emma sighed quietly, waiting for Regina to finish. "I know. We're almost back. I'm with Ruby. And…no, there wasn't anything there." Then, she went silent a moment more as the Captain spoke again.

"I'm not surprised. He was clever enough to fool all of us." Emma gasped.

Ruby turned onto their street. She quickly regained herself. "I know. I should have told you. I'll explain as best I can. We're pulling in now, I'll be there in a few minutes." After another moment, she hung up.

* * *

_He'd already been in communication with them. When Gold had told her about Spencer, Regina was the one who had placed the call to the FBI. She'd been on a special committee investigating him for months, and there were officers at his door within the hour. And since it had been a long time coming, she had already obtained an arrest warrant; Spencer would be waiting for them at the bureau whenever they were finished. _

_Now, for the second time, she was one of several officers seated around his conference table, along with two FBI, a couple from the Securities and Exchange Commission, and a very quiet William Smee. The antiquarian had been responsible for many of their initial findings about Spencer and was something of a mastermind in his own right, albeit one who wasn't on Gold's good side; he sat by Neal, who was watching as his father spelled out not only Liam's findings but those of others in the firm since his death. _

_Just as they were about to indict Spencer on conspiracy to commit murder as well, though, Gold brought out the addendum. A few noncritical details had been removed, of course, but the addition of Graham to the puzzle, a sociopath with a vendetta against Liam, changed things. Regina would have to have a word with Emma. After a long moment, she decided she wasn't angry with the detective; rather, it was the thought she, too, had been played, a thought burned through her like a hot snake, threatening her composure. _

_She would deal with that later. For now, she had Spencer. And because she had Spencer, it was a good day._

* * *

The Captain's door was cracked open when she arrived. Still, she knocked. "Come in, Emma."

She did. She sat down, silent. Regina was typing something, the faintest hint of urgency across her brow. After a moment, she turned to Emma.

"I should take your badge for this."

Emma felt her stomach drop. She took a deep breath. There was no question what "this" was—but she stayed very still, refusing to break eye contact with Regina, refusing to let her own shortcomings show through on her face. She'd had at least a few minutes to consider this might be a possibility before she arrived, and if it happened, she would take it with dignity.

But it didn't. To her surprise, Regina was the one to break their gaze first; she looked down, sighing to herself and shaking her head. When she spoke again, she neither apologised nor explained herself. Instead, she took Emma by surprise for the second time in the same minute.

"Yesterday, I met with Mr. Gold," she began. She met Emma's eyes. "I'm afraid I haven't been quite honest with you either. I've been investigating Albert Spencer's activity for several months. We knew this case was connected to him, which is why I gave it to you in the first place."

It was a long moment before she spoke again. She looked at her monitor a moment, then back at Emma.

"Can you tell me about what his involvement was?"

Emma nodded. "Yeah."

She did. She didn't mention Neverland, the Dreamshade, or Graham's missing heart, but she didn't need to; even without them, it was a long explanation. And it was essentially what Gold had explained the day before. He'd had some kind of a vendetta against Liam; he'd set up a way to take him out through other people, which would conveniently take care of a few others who'd crossed him as well. Spencer was a happy accident, a criminal apparently caught in the crossfire of another criminal. And then there was Ariel. Ariel, he hadn't wanted to implicate until the plan was already going. She'd crossed him in the process by getting mixed up with Spencer. She was innocent, though.

"And no," she admitted at the end of several minutes' explanation. "I haven't found who actually killed Liam."

_Because he killed himself,_ Emma thought. _But it's not like I can explain how._

It wasn't a complete surprise. The Captain nodded. It was almost beside the point, by now.

"At least Graham was honest about one thing," Emma added. It was late, by then; it had been dark for nearly an hour, and Killian would be arriving before too long.

There was a cartel. In a manner of speaking, anyway. Graham had switched out a few details—it was Spencer, not Smee, who led them to Voyager, and it was Voyager who brought _him_ down, but not Liam—Liam was with the cartel, not against it. Graham had misconstrued it to cover his tracks, then planted evidence about both Spencer and Ariel to throw her off long enough for him to get away.

"I want to find him," Emma admitted. She was looking out the dark window, now, not at Regina. "I know it's not in my power to do that, now, but I want to find him."

By the time she arrived home that evening, it was nearly 9:00. Killian would be arriving in a couple of hours. It was Thursday, probably the longest Thursday of her life—by the time she left for the airport, Henry would be asleep.

And he was. She waited half an hour before leaving, just to make sure. Before that, she'd joined him for a while, watching him work on his homework under the pretence of reading over some case materials. His presence was calming, steadying in a way hers should have been for him but often wasn't. _He's more resilient than I realised_, she thought as she ruffled his hair on the way out.

She took her own car. The dilapidated yellow Bug she'd never had the heart to get rid of was parked in the shared garage of her complex, and its presence, like her son's, was calming. As she parked at JFK and walked in, she'd had half a mind to make a sign bearing his name—but by the time she'd thought it, she already saw him walking toward her with purpose.

_Stupid idea,_ she thought. She couldn't have missed him for a second.

"Emma," he said simply.

She paused, regarding him. She had barely a few seconds to note that he was dressed smartly and no longer had a hook for a left hand. Before she knew what she was doing, she had her arms around him, as though to make sure he was really there. She stayed like that for several moments, immobile.

Now it was him who paused. Tentatively, he did the same.

And then the moment was over, and they were walking back toward her car.

* * *

"How did it happen?" She asked.

There was no question as to what she meant. The last time she'd seen him—it was in Neverland, had it really only been two days since then?—they'd realised that drinking the spring water and restoring his memories had trapped him there. She remembered the helpless urgency of wanting to go wake him up; he remembered the almost agonising drag of the days whose time matched the earth's once he'd had his memories back.

"That's actually why I came," he answered.

"I know that," she said, a little sharper than she'd meant to. She sighed. "Sorry. It's been a long week. I know you couldn't have come before, you were out cold. So _how_ are you here?"

"Your partner woke me."

Emma felt her blood run cold. With a very concentrated effort, she managed to keep her eyes on the road and remain silent. She wanted to scream. Killian continued before she could do anything of the sort.

"I'd been thinking of trying to contact you like I did the doctor in your lab when he woke me. He had a vial of the spring water, and he used it on me." This time Emma had to jerk the car back into its lane when she heard the rumble of the guard ruts below her wheels.

"Where is he now?" She asked after a moment.

"I've no idea. He was unconscious when I left." Killian grinned a bit, then, a lopsided thing she'd seen a few times in Neverland. "I may have had something to with that."

She continued immediately. "But he didn't follow you."

"Not as far as I could tell."

She was quiet, then. Surprisingly, her mind wasn't racing; rather, there just wasn't anything more to say. Fortunately, for her, Killian filled the silence.

"I wager a guess you know what Graham's role is in this whole mess?" Emma nodded. "Good, I don't need to explain it. So you know that by using the Neverland water on me, he meant to kill me. He thought I'd been the one who killed Liam."

At that, Killian chuckled to himself. Evidently he found the matter of his impending death funny. Or perhaps it was a front. Either way, Emma glared at him for as long as she could without crashing her car.

"Did you?" she asked.

He spun to face her. She was still looking at him, but she turned forward. "No, I didn't!" His face was a mixture of laughter and shock that faded as he continued speaking. "And before you ask, no, I'm not going to die—the water was the only thing that could have woken me. The guy actually did me a favour."

And then, just as the knots that had formed in her stomach were untwisting themselves, her phone rang.

* * *

_Mary Margaret looked up from where she'd been preparing her morning tea when she heard a knock at the door. David had left already; he was in the middle of an annual training for new officers, something that always left him in a good mood despite the long hours. He was a natural at it, and apparently this was a good crop._

_She saw Ariel's red hair peep around the corner. Emma had called her the night she had shown up on her doorstep, explaining that someone was after her and asking if it would be possible for her to look out for her for a couple of days. She'd agreed immediately, shushing Emma when she'd tried to explain with the order to go bag herself a perp, first._

"_I'll be right there," Ariel called as she darted back out of sight. The girl wasn't dressed yet. But she wasn't surprised; he was early._

_She set the kettle back on the stovetop and checked around the corner again. Ariel's door was mostly closed, and she heard a harried rustling sound from in there. She smiled and walked over to the door._

"_Come on in, Eric," she said. _

_He stepped inside. She looked over at her son, who was sleeping in his chair, a forgotten toy still clutched in his tiny hand. When she turned again, Eric had followed her gaze. He was smiling, which grew again when he saw Ariel emerge from the guest room and meticulously close the door so it wouldn't make a sound._

_She beamed when she saw him, throwing her bag on her shoulder and reaching up to hug him. The weight of it made her stagger a bit, so Eric took it from her._

"_Do you guys need anything before you go?" Mary Margaret asked, still smiling warmly after watching their interaction. _

"_I think we have everything," Ariel answered. She looked at Eric, then back at her host. "Thank you again for doing this. Especially when you didn't—"_

_But Mary Margaret was shaking her head. "You don't have to tell me," she said. She came over and hugged Ariel, shaking Eric's hand, too, for good measure. "Just be safe."_

That was yesterday. Now they were somewhere west of Chicago. They'd taken turns driving throughout the day, barely stopping; Eric had relatives in Carmel, California who would take them in for a few days until they could head to Vancouver. In the glove box were their passports, now bearing alternative names, and every other document they'd need to show to establish that Ariel really had taken a job with a Canadian publishing firm and they had every right to be there.

They'd taken Eric's car, since hers wasn't an option anymore. Eric was driving, now; in between staring idly out the window, she glanced at her phone with purpose, as though expecting it to ring any minute. She sighed. It was guilt, she knew that. She'd left without saying anything to Emma. But how could she? She'd practically lied to her, bargaining for the immunity she knew she'd need.

But what else could she have done? She couldn't have told the whole truth; she'd never have seen Eric again, she knew that. It was like he'd acted on autopilot. Maybe he had. But she couldn't almost lose him again; not after she'd almost lost him once, two years ago, when his helicopter went down in Afghanistan. He had no way of knowing that Graham had framed _her_ in the process. So, once again, she'd done what she'd had to do to protect him.

She turned her phone off and placed it in the side pocket in the door. Staring at it wouldn't do any good. She'd call Emma later, when they were safe, once everything was over. She promised herself.

Eric slid his upturned hand toward her on the centre console. Ariel placed hers in his, and his fingers wrapped around hers, silently promising her everything would be okay.

She would just have to believe that.

* * *

Her phone was in the cup holder.

"Speak of the devil," Killian said. He'd beaten her to it, meaning to ask and to hit 'ignore' for her if it was someone who could wait—instead, he answered, without asking permission.

"Sorry to inform you, mate, but Emma is otherwise occupied. If you were calling to let her know you'd killed me, you might have waited until I was already dead."

Graham. As soon as she realised, Emma got off the main road and parked on a side street. They were somewhere near Highland Park. She could hear every word of his response in the still air.

"Killian," he said. She pictured him sitting somewhere in the early morning—he was probably still in Europe, perhaps taking a morning coffee somewhere on a terrace, his head rolled back in exasperation. "Have you told her yet? Actually, don't answer—I want to speak with her."

He was looking at her, now. Emma met his eyes and held her hand out.

"Graham," she said flatly.

He'd relaxed a bit. She heard it in his voice. "Emma," he said. He sounded relieved. She wasn't sure why. "It's good to hear you."

And then, he paused. She waited. So did Killian.

"I'm in Switzerland," he began. She put him on speaker, then, and muted the volume on her controls. On autopilot, now, she opened her police GPS app. Graham continued without pausing. "I'm on my way to Algeria. Meeting a contact there. Emma, I wanted to apologise."

She took the phone off speaker for a moment before responding. "You wanted to apologise." It was a question, but it came out a statement. She put him on speaker again and resumed her work.

"Yes. For this mess. For involving you. It was never meant to involve you. God, Emma. I love you." Her stomach flipped. Killian stilled next to her. She was triangulating his signal—a second or two after he finished speaking, she'd located him. "I can't be upset, though."

She took the phone off speaker again.

"And why is that?"

She sent the triangulated signal coordinates to Regina, along with an explanatory message.

—_Found G. In Switz. En route to Algeria. Send to Interpol ASAP_

"Because it was my mistake in the first place. All of it. Manipulating your feelings, leaving too quickly—that was a mistake, that was selfish, and I wanted to apologise."

Thirty seconds later, as Graham was still speaking, she received a reply.

—_Good work, detective._

Emma took a deep breath. Suddenly, the weight she'd worn since she'd found Liam's body just slipped off and melted through the floor at her feet, like it had never been there at all. A few moments passed—she heard Graham inhale through the line as though he were about to speak, when she began laughing, radiantly, like she had never been more alive.

And maybe she hadn't.

"I wish I could believe you, Graham," she said through it.

And then the line went dead.

It was over.

Killian had never stopped looking at her. She leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes.

"I'm ready to go," she said.

* * *

_I'll be posting the epilogue within the next couple of days. Nothing to gain at this point in waiting until Monday. ;) __I know roughly how many of you have stuck around based on my story stats, and it's significantly more than the number of reviews I've gotten - if I haven't heard from you yet, please do let me know what you thought! _

_This story came about as a NaNoWriMo-style exercise for me. Not counting the revisions I did in January, I wrote it in the span of about four weeks last summer, and it was the first non-academic piece longer than one chapter that I'd written since the summer of 2010. After my burnout-related health scare last year, I had it in my heart to get back into fictionwriting and figured taking the plunge like that and just making myself write stuff would be the way to go. As I was obsessed with Once at the time, this story came into being. It's not my best work (I still consider my Vampire Diaries oneshot "Perchance to Dream" my greatest work), but it's complete. The fact it's complete is a big deal for me, especially since I wrote it entirely without muse._

_That's probably the main thing I learned while writing this: that muse isn't this big catch-all I used to think it was. It_ is_ possible to do creative work on willpower alone. Will it be as great as "inspired" work? Probably not. There's a lot to be said for talent. But who are you writing for, really? I ask my editing clients the same thing all the time: are you writing to please people, or are you writing for yourself?_

_Thanks for reading, guys. It means a lot to me. See you in a couple of days. P.S. - the title of this chapter comes from the song by the greatest band Seattle, Washington has produced since Nirvana, The Classic Crime. Go have a listen.  
_


	13. Epilogue: The Open

**AN:** It's been a great ride, guys. Lots of love.

* * *

**Epilogue  
**_The open_

She felt herself slip.

There was no way of knowing how high up she was, but that question was the first thing that crossed into her mind as her feet lost their footing. The path was barely eight inches wide, the stretch of ground her resurrected Timberland boots were barely clinging to crumbling on the edges as though it were a pie crust and not the side of a mountain.

Strangely, an image of Mary Margaret's award-winning pumpkin pie flashed in her mind. She reached her hand out, mind still racing. That was a long time ago, but it didn't feel like it; the fact Henry was now twelve was her only evidence to the contrary.

The vine was all that tethered her to the crumbling façade of the mountain. Until this point, she hadn't had to use it. It was almost in her grasp—thick and purple and substantial looking, much more so than the mountainside. She thought of Henry again. He'd been raised his first four years in the co-op, the little village that had literally rallied itself around her to help her get through school.

A hand reached out to grab hers before she could take hold of the vine. As soon as it touched her, all thoughts of Leroy, Tom, Tink, Archie, and the others evaporated from her mind. She looked up, scanning for the eyes that belonged to the hand. Killian's eyes were so blue it made her feel cold. And she felt cold, then—like she'd jumped into a lake, or like someone was pouring water into her. She registered his mouth moving, telling her not to grab the vine.

She'd originally majored in criminal justice as a joke. She was nursing Henry on the couch in one of the TV rooms, the one by the big, central kitchen. She had a textbook in front of her and was skimming it. In the background were Law &amp; Order reruns. She'd turned them on so she could focus. Mary Margaret was fixing her dinner, joking that Henry would grow up paranoid because of all the crime shows she watched. Emma vowed to read him her textbooks out loud every night so he would grow up informed, not scared.

"He'll be the most well-rested baby in Boston," her friend joked.

She registered something snarky coming out of her mouth before Killian's eyes narrowed infinitesimally. It was a warning. She hadn't actually fallen, but the sinking feeling in her stomach was telling her otherwise. Leave it to her to reach for poison to save her life.

After all, that had been her story. Her first love had been a trap. It had taken her a long time to forgive Neal, and it was only by her roommate's infinite well of encouragement and optimism that she'd managed it. She'd been on the brink—recently released from the foster system and more alone than ever—and of course, the first significant connection she'd made in her freedom had been poisonous. Criminal. Both she and Neal had come far since then, but it still hurt at the time.

Emma walked carefully after that. As she chided herself for her clumsiness, a proverb she'd read somewhere flashed through her head: whatever happens once will never happen again, but whatever happens twice, you can be sure it will happen a third time. Clearly the universe was fucking with her if her _metaphorical_ reaching for poison was now _literally_ the case. Amidst the climb, her thoughts continued to spiral like that for some time, distracting herself from the reality of how dangerous this was. Before she knew it, they'd reached the summit, and Killian was cutting the vines away from the entrance to the pool.

She stepped carefully over the purple ooze spreading out from the entrance. When she saw Killian raise the vial of spring water to his lips, she'd almost wanted to say something. She didn't. And now, here she was, and he was somewhere, unconscious, trapped in Neverland.

_Except he wasn't, _she thought. She turned behind her, expecting to see the ring of boulders that lined the clearing at the top of the mountain, but all she saw was the bright red of her alarm clock. _4:21._

Emma pulled the covers back over her head. It was Friday morning, the Friday she'd begun to think would never come. _It's been, what, twelve days? _She thought. It may as well have been a lifetime. With a soft exhale, she rolled back over and allowed herself to drift off. There would be no morning run today.

Some time later, a knock on her door roused her from light sleep.

"Mom?"

Henry. Henry was knocking. She rolled over and glanced at her clock again. _6:33._ She swore to herself and sat up, rubbing a hand over her eyes.

"I noticed your light was off, just wanted to make sure you were up." Then, silence. The sound of Henry's footfalls resumed, followed a moment later by those of his bathroom door closing and the shower turning on. Without thinking about it, Emma smiled. _Always taking care of me,_ she thought.

Killian had stayed at his brother's old place in East Village that night. Emma had offered for him to crash on her couch, but he turned it down in favour of a real bed. He'd had a key to it ever since his brother had bought the place. But before he got out of the car, he'd turned to her.

"Tell you what, I'll come over for breakfast instead."

"That's awfully presumptuous of you," she'd joked.

"Ah, you're right. Tomorrow is Friday, surely you'll be working." He arced a brow. "Have dinner with me, then."

In the few moments before she responded, Emma's gaze set. "Okay. I'll meet you at my house at seven—I'll text you the address. But, Killian," she sighed, then, more to herself than him. "We'll probably need you to come in at some point."

Killian nodded, hiding a suddenly grave expression by turning toward the old-style façade of his brother's apartment building. "Of course." With a smile that belied the grief behind his eyes, then, he inclined his head in farewell and walked up to the door, producing a key from the pocket of his leather jacket. The mother in Emma had forced her to wait until the door had closed behind him to drive off; when it did, she'd rolled her window up and left.

Now, Emma appreciated the slowness of the morning. Before the hot water was gone, Emma retreated to her own bathroom and doused herself off quickly, taking her time, for once, to blow-dry her hair and relishing in the warm air the way she might have the beaches of Neverland. When she switched it off, she was smiling a bit, a look that grew when she noticed Henry had started in on breakfast preparations without her. She set her jacket over the back of the couch as she walked into the kitchen and took a seat on one of the barstools.

As she watched her son cooking, Emma thought about telling him she'd wrapped up a case yesterday before deciding against it. But that made her think of Killian, their weird car ride, finding Graham. With a small sound of protest, she rested her head in her hands as though physically keeping the spiral of her thoughts from accelerating further. The previous few days had seen _more_ than enough of that. Before she knew it, Henry was pushing a plate of eggs, bacon, peppered tomato wedges and toast in front of her and sitting next to her with his own.

The day had passed quickly after that. By the time she'd made it to work, her coffee was waiting for her at her desk. The morning passed in a flurry of debriefings, meetings, and congratulations, nearly all of which felt hollow. It was only a week, after all, that she'd been doing this alone. As the day went on, Emma found herself forcing herself to remember that her partner was on the other side of this, that the absence she still felt at her side would get better with time.

She felt dazed. It was enough that she barely registered when her phone buzzed with the notification that Killian would be coming by after lunch that day to collect his brother's things. Unsure of what possessed her to do so, she headed down to forensics herself. His back was to her when she arrived; he was meeting with some of Victor's team, there to pick up what little had been on Liam's person the previous Monday.

Perhaps it was morbid curiosity, a desire for closure, or her need to ground Liam's bizarre death somehow in a relationship with another human being, but she remained with Killian and Victor as the doctor led him to the morgue. At first, it was typical questions: could he confirm this was Liam, etcetera. After those had passed and the cause of death confirmed, Dr. Whale looked from Killian to the body almost expectantly. Emma's brows drew. She'd missed something.

Killian, for his part, had only needed to see the arm to know. "Suicide, bloody bastard," he clipped out. "Preventative suicide." He fairly spat the words. Whale looked up, then, but hadn't pressed. A few awkward moments passed before Emma met Killian's eyes, nodding to both men and excusing herself. Unbeknownst as to why, she felt the pressure of tears behind her eyes, and she swiped at them furiously as she climbed the stairs.

Never mind the fact her own loss hadn't occurred yet. If what Graham had said on the phone yesterday was true, it was only a matter of time before he, too, was dead. He'd betrayed her twice; he'd abandoned her when she needed him most. Would she have done the same thing? No. And yet, as much as she wished there wasn't—as much as she wished everything was just _simpler—_she found it impossible not to forgive him. It had become clear, over the past days, that the one thing every facet of this case had in common with every other is that no one controlled their own outcome. Each was chasing the consequences of someone else's decision, the original cause of which was a child's desire to save a dying realm. What began as a noble action was corrupted until everyone it touched was left burned. In what was mercifully an empty bathroom on the second floor of the building, she shut herself in a stall and allowed the tears she'd been holding back for nearly two weeks stream down freely, until she felt emptied out.

Much later, long after she'd boosted herself in the preparation of the most elaborate meal she could think of using ingredients at hand, she opened the door, smelling of garlic and herbs, to a man it seemed impossible she should ever know. There was a trace of the same fatigue and loss behind his eyes as she felt in her own. And in a way, she realised, they were united in grief.

What happens once will never happen again. What happens twice, you can be sure it will happen a third time. Killian was the first to smile. In one hand, he held up a bottle of Cabernet, still halfway in its bag, and a loaf from a bakery he'd heard from a reliable source was the best in the city, which Emma responded to with a smile of her own as she brought it to the table with the dishes she'd already set out. Henry looked up from his homework, then, and waved Killian in. A helmet and leather jacket were tucked into the crook of his other arm.

"You drive a motorcycle?" Henry asked. Emma was at the stove finishing the last of the dinner preparations; she looked up and gave Killian a sharp look, but he was too busy entertaining her son.

"As a matter of fact I do," he answered. He handed Henry his helmet. "This one's my brother's, though. Mine is back at my flat in Edinburgh."

"Not a chance, kiddo," Emma said from the kitchen.

"Come _on_, mom, I hadn't even asked yet!"

She heard Killian chuckle as he removed his jacket and gloves and hung them over the back of the sofa. "Perceptive lass," he whispered to Henry.

"She has to be, it comes with the territory," he responded. "What's your name, anyway?"

Killian paused a minute, thinking it over.

"Captain Hook."

He heard a quiet snicker from the kitchen.

"Come on, I'm not a kid. What is it really?"

"You don't believe me? Have a look, then." He rolled back the skin over his prosthetic, watching with pleasure as Henry's eyes grew wide.

"No way, is that real?"

He curled his fingers individually, showcasing their surprising dexterity. "Real as they can make them," he answered.

He stayed after dinner. Everything about it was easy. When he complimented her cooking, she told him to thank her college roommate. And he was _awesome_ with Henry. After helping her clean up, they went to go play Mario Kart—and Henry didn't have to let him win. He beat him, the first time and the second, before Henry tied their score.

Before he left, he waited until Henry was in another room before he approached Emma again. He looked at her fixedly.

"I would like to see you again," he said. He lowered his voice. "Here, outside Neverland. I want to know you."

"I'm not that interesting."

"I think I'll be the judge of that." She was leaning against the counter. Without thinking about it, he closed some of the distance between them and mirrored her pose across the small aisle. "Have dinner with me. Again. Tomorrow. Where you don't have to prepare it."

She'd been looking off in the direction of Henry's room, but she faced him when he spoke again. Her stomach twisted a bit. "I can't tomorrow," she said quickly. "Henry has a soccer tournament in Long Beach, last of the season. I told him I'd be there."

"Sunday, then?"

Emma's brows drew in confusion. "You're still going to be here Sunday evening?"

Killian smiled. "Monday is a holiday, love."

She bit her lip, then, holding their gaze. "Okay. But nothing too fancy."

There were logistics, of course. After missing nearly two weeks of work, Killian had to be back that week; likewise, there was his transfer to the New York division that had to be finalised, visas that had to be applied for, motorcycles that had to be sold, and various transferences of titles to be made so he had a place to live in the city. On her end, once enough of the case was declassified, there were a number of conversations to be had with Mary Margaret about both Graham and Killian. But those things had a way of working themselves out, in time.

In the end, she told Mary Margaret before Killian had returned to New York. Her friend was shocked on both counts—that her partner could do something like that, and that Emma was actually interested in a _man._

"After only two dates? Who are you and what have you done with Emma Swan?"

—That he was willing to uproot himself like that, though, didn't faze Mary Margaret in the slightest.

Owing to an expedited transfer process, Killian returned to New York in the span of a month. His bike arrived in a shipping crate a few weeks later, though it was many weeks after that before Henry convinced Emma to let Killian take him for a ride. Eventually, the time came to put his brother's former place on the market. It sold in three weeks. Feeling no further need to wait, they had a June wedding at Ruth Nolan's small farm on Long Island; Killian had long since picked up Liam's work where he left off, by then. Emma continued her work without a partner.

Graham made it to Algeria, flanked by Interpol from the time he left the airport in Algiers and pursued through seven provinces until he threw his phone into a small crowd of protesters in Laghouat. He was last seen with a group of Touareg camel traders in Ain Salah, but it is not known whether he is alive or dead.

Albert Spencer was sentenced to 20 years for securities fraud, also receiving a fine of $5 million for each known incident. His sentence was commuted at six years, due to good behaviour and poor health.

Ariel and Eric were married before a magistrate in Carmel. She continued to work for the publishing firm until she became pregnant with her first child, at which time she began a relatively successful career as a novelist. Eric worked in private security. He was never extradited.

* * *

_It took me a little longer than I was hoping to get this up, and for that, my apologies. I encountered a glaring plot hole in the middle of writing that forced me to re-do half the epilogue, and the rest of it just wouldn't come without a fight. The time-twisting is intentional. I wrote this while I was on a Borges kick, so that's my little homage to him.  
_

_It really has been a great ride. Last chapter was kinda my farewell message in a lot of ways - I've been feeling the need to take a step back and work on my writing in private for a while, and the fact this epilogue isn't quite sitting well with me is confirming that feeling. I have a halfway-finished companion piece to this story that I'm hoping to post soonish, but I'm not making promises.  
_

_I will see you when I see you. Please do review if you haven't already. :)_

_Love,_

_Vena_


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